


Paradise Found

by Problematic_Wesker_Stans



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Desert Island Fic, F/M, Graphic Sex, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Reluctant Sex, Slow Romance, character evolution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-05-16 17:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Problematic_Wesker_Stans/pseuds/Problematic_Wesker_Stans
Summary: Evil wins. Civilization crumbles. Instead of letting his friends and family fall to the chaos, Chris strikes a bargain with the devil. Albert Wesker will save their souls...but on his terms. He will ascend as a god in this new, cleansed world. And nothing will get in the way of his plans.





	1. Twenty-Four Hour Window

 

 

* * *

  " _And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes."_

_-Dante Alighieri, "Inferno"_

* * *

 

_**July 2, 2009** _

Claire stared at the painting of a rosy sunset on the wall across from the toilet.

She blinked.

It made no sense. There was…a window to her right, overlooking the cerulean ocean. Plenty of real sunsets out there.

The painting was a clumsy, kitschy imitation of the real thing. Something she'd see in a dentist's office - a meaningless piece of art meant to fade into the background. Streaky acrylics caught the fluorescent lights.

No sense.

She set the little cup full of her urine on the countertop next to her. The pale yellow fluid sloshed over the brim, and a drop trailed slowly down the side. She didn't bother wiping it off with the balled up toilet paper in her hand.

 _How fucking embarrassing_ , she thought, rubbing her face.

Above her, a fan purred, stirring the warm air in the room. She watched a sea bird she couldn't name land on the surface of the water, tucking in its wings and riding on the gentle waves.

There was a sharp rap on the door.

"Whenever you're ready, Ms. Redfield." His voice was muffled through the wood, but reliably monotonous.

She closed her eyes and hung her head.

* * *

Wesker snapped a glove over his wrist.

Claire hovered awkwardly in the far corner of the tiny bathroom, sticking close to the opposite wall. The more distance between them, the better - and she watched warily as he moved, her muscles tensed and ready to pounce. To run. To claw her way through the door.

But he worked slowly, and calmly. He moved with a kind of precise, mechanical detachment, and he didn't say a word.

He barely seemed to notice her.

He barely seemed to notice  _anything._ He seemed completely unfazed by all of it - by her, by the too-small room, by the gulls crying outside.

By the fact that the world had split apart at the seams, leaving her here.

In a bathroom of an abandoned all-inclusive couples resort.

Trapped on a tropical island in the Pacific.

Standing next to Albert Wesker as he scrutinized a cup full of her piss.

_Business as usual._

The room was silent save for the hum of the fan, and the buzzing lights, and the rush of breeze and waves through the window. She took a deep breath through her nose. The heat was stifling, and she plucked her sweat-soaked tank top away from her skin, bitterly wondering how long this  _examination_ would take.

"How do you know I'm close?" she finally asked, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

He picked out a packet from the bright pink box. She couldn't read the label - it was all in French. "I can smell you."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

He sighed, tearing open the plastic wrapping. "I mean...it's possible for me to detect minute changes in the cycles of the human reproductive system."

Her upper lip curled into a sneer at the invasive thought. She glared at him, watching as he scanned the contents of the packet.

"That's really fucking disgusting," she said quietly.

Wesker turned, sending her a pointed red stare over his shoulder.

She felt herself shrink away beneath the look, still half-anticipating that he might change his mind and kill her on the spot. But he only went back to the task at hand, dipping what appeared to a litmus test strip into the cup. "Trust that it's not the most pleasant experience for me either," he muttered.

She was silent for a moment, watching as he let the strip soak up her urine. She chewed a nail. Her stomach churned with raw nerves and the sickeningly sweet residue of cherry hand soap.

He laid the yellowed strip on a folded paper towel and stepped back…waiting.

"So...do I smell… _bad_?" she asked hesitantly.

He shook his head, not bothering to look at her.

She frowned at his lack of an answer. The thought of having any kind of civil conversation with him disgusted her. The thought of being in the same  _room_ with him disgusted her. But she pushed on, curiosity outweighing her apprehension. "Well…what do I smell —"

"Ripe." He cut her off. "You smell ripe. Ready. Something like a hot, wet night." He studied the little strip as he spoke.

She stood dumbly, forcing herself not to gape at his description of her scent. Something about it was so...invasive.

 _Lurid,_ even. His choice of words...

"Egg-white discharge? Tender breasts?" he asked casually.

"What the fu… _what_?" she snarled, the fear she'd felt moments ago evaporating.

He looked up then, his body going limp with exasperation. "The symptoms of ovulation. Do you have discharge, the consistency of egg whites, even when not aroused? Are your breasts sore at all? Do your moods feel…" He spoke quickly, and gestured dismissively. "Amplified, somehow?"

She hugged herself tightly, and remained silent as he seemed to examine the most intimate things about her.

"I'll take that as  _yes_ , then." He eyed his watch, and then compared the used strip with the chart on the back of the colorful box. "Hmm." He looked thoughtful as he balled up the paper towel and tossed it in the trash.

" _Hmm_  what?" She dropped her arms and stepped towards him, unable to help herself. She peered over his shoulder, squinting at the chart.

"You're a thirty-two." He stripped the latex glove off and finally turned to her. "That's quite high. Above average."

"Above…?" She blinked, trying to make sense of the numbers and labels on the box. "Wait.  _Wait._ What does that —"

"You're at the peak of your cycle." He leaned back against the counter, not quite meeting her eyes. His gaze hovered on a spot just above her shoulder. "We have a 24-hour window for conception, starting…now."

She paled. She stumbled back towards the wall, bracing herself against it. Her head swam. Her temples throbbed.

_Twenty-four hours for conception._

_Twenty-four hours._

_Twenty-four..._

He reached out to her…but stopped when she shirked his attempt.

They stared at each other, her eyes burning with unshed tears, and rage, and  _hatred_ as the meaning of his words sunk in. When it all became too strange, he mercifully looked away.

"You'll need time to prepare, I'm sure." He took a deep breath and shook his wrist out, glancing once more at the time. "I'll come to you tonight. At ten."

Her nostrils flared with each labored breath she took. She trembled, her whole body quivering.

_It couldn't be real. It couldn't. None of it could be real..._

"Ms. Redfield?" he asked, his hand on the door knob.

She looked up in his direction. Unseeing. Unfocused.

He paused, turning his gaze away from her. "It's ugly business, I know. I'll make an effort to be efficient," he said softly.

It was somehow  _worse_  to hear him feign concern. To hear him speak in a voice with gentle edges. To hear him call it  _ugly business._

His plan to rape her pregnant.

The bathroom door shut behind him, firm and final.

And she was left alone with her rage…and her terror.

* * *

_**April 14, 2009** _

His footsteps echoed as he strode down the steel corridor, making his way towards the lower deck of the ship.

Thirty-seven days.

Thirty-seven days since Africa, with scorched red earth beneath his boots and the blistering white sun overhead.

Thirty-seven days since The End had begun.

 _And what slow, dragging days they had been._ The End had not struck quickly, or sharply, or like a burst of blinding flame. It had settled on civilization like silt on a riverbed. Sand sinking into cracks, trickling down the throat, filling the lungs inch by inch.

The End was a death rattle. A desperate, dying gasp, thirty-seven days long.

The halls were silent that evening. All around him, wood creaked and metal rattled, shifting with the rolling waves.  _It was strange,_ he thought as he walked lower and lower, down towards the belly of the ship. A few weeks ago, all he wanted was silence. He craved it desperately, wildly. An end to the chaos teeming all around him.

An end to the  _noise._

And now he had it. More than enough of it. He had long, empty halls, and shadowed rooms with low golden lights. He had damp air, and the heavy echo of his boots, and the groaning, the constant damned  _groaning_ of the ship…

And nothing but his thoughts, rushing and tumbling over one another. Filling the space the chaos had left behind.

He made his way through the door to the lowest deck, the salt-rusted hinges straining in protest as he pushed against them.

He blinked against the rush of light, a stark shade of blue. The walls glimmered and rippled with eerie liquid patterns.

This room smelled different than the rest...no salt, no brine, no damp wood. Instead, it was filled with the bitter, sterile scent of cryogenic fluid.

Ten chambers were lined up in two neat rows, against either wall.

Ten people slept, peaceful and content. The survivors of The End. Thoroughly oblivious to the way civilization crumbled, miles and miles away.

There was something comforting about this place, though he was reluctant to admit it. There was a low hum to the room - not just from the equipment, but it seemed to radiate a kind of energy, where the rest of the ship felt desolate and barren. Down here, beneath the dark waters, hearts pumped blood, and lungs filtered air, and minds, though numbed to unconsciousness, flickered with electricity.

It felt warm here.

It felt  _alive_ here.

And he found himself drawn to that source of heat and light, night after night. A sad, desperate moth, fluttering frantically, reaching for excuses.  _Checking pulse readings, checking fluid retention, checking things that had already been checked twice over..._

Tonight, he found Jill hunched over one of the chambers, face cast in a pale glow. Her hair hung in lifeless blonde strands, brushing against the curved glass, and her lips were slightly parted as if she were in the middle of a sentence.

She didn't look up when he entered. Or when he turned to close the door behind him. Or when he walked towards her, and stopped at her side, and looked down at the subject inside - Redfield, his eyes closed, his features slack with sleep.

He glanced at the monitor to the side of the chamber. Normal readings. A thin green line spiking and dipping in rhythm with the man's heartbeat.

"They're all stable?" he asked, watching as Jill's eyes flitted over the serene face beneath the glass, following a trail of bubbles making their way up the tube.

She nodded once. Her lips were pressed tight, a thin, pale line.

"Electrolyte levels?"

Another nod. She rested her fingertips against the curved glass, her face held in a careful, stoic mask.

He turned away, glancing down the row of chambers. His eyes landed on Kennedy, his head tilted slightly to the side as if he'd fallen asleep against the window during a long car ride. On Redfield's young BSAA partner, her features refusing to relax from her displeased scowl. On Redfield's sister, unruly wisps of copper curls drifting around messily.

"Keep a close eye on Birkin," he said, taking a few steps away from Redfield's pod. "I don't trust that she'll regulate as well as-"

"Okay."

He turned back towards Jill. It was the first word she'd spoken since the morning. Or since yesterday. Or since the day before that, perhaps...while he controlled the ship's environment with an unrelenting precision, he found the hours had begun bleeding together. Sunrises and sunsets and dim days and dark nights.

He hadn't heard her voice in quite some time. It cracked around the word.

A sharp, pointed word.

"Is there a problem?" He narrowed his eyes, watching as she trailed her fingertips along the pod. The glass squeaked beneath her skin.

"I'll check her later," she answered, hand falling to her side. "She's fine."

He watched as she turned and walked away, the sound of her footsteps muffled by the dull buzz of the equipment. By the softly beeping monitors.

By the low, endless moaning of the ship. A haunting noise he felt deep in his bones.

* * *

_**July 2, 2009** _

"This is crazy." Josh turned the page of an old newspaper. "This is batshit crazy."

From across the table, Claire squinted at the date in the top right corner of what he was reading:  _June 15th, 2009._

On the beach, frothy waves rolled in and out, and the sun sank into the ocean behind a curtain of pink and gold.

Sheva crunched on another chip and wiped her fingertips on a napkin. The smell of salt and vinegar burned Claire's nose; she turned her head.

"Moscow…the entire city of Moscow…fell in a  _week?"_  Josh asked incredulously, looking up at Jill.

She nodded to him. There was a bowl of untouched Ramen in front of her.

Claire watched her through the steam rising up from the noodles. She realized she couldn't quite remember the sound of the woman's voice - Jill was so solemn now. So solemn, and so quiet, and so  _empty..._

There were…things Claire wanted to ask her. Things she'd need to pull her aside for. She was sure Jill would know the answers. Jill would know - most likely,  _probably_  - what it was to be with him, to feel his hands on her body..to be  _raped_  by him. She blanched at the word, feeling a lump rise in her throat. Her fingers curled around the edge of the table.

Jill had been with him for years. He must have…at some point…

Maybe that was why she didn't talk now.

Maybe it wasn't The End that ruined her.

Maybe he had destroyed her before The End began.

"What is it?" Jill asked, and the sudden strangeness of her half-whispered words startled Claire.

She took a deep breath and blinked. "What?"

"You were looking at me. You seem upset."

She hesitated. "No, I'm...I'm fine." She nodded for emphasis.

Jill narrowed her hollow blue eyes.

At the end of the table, Sheva and Josh prattled on about the city that wasn't Moscow anymore.

"Hey," Claire said. She licked her lips, wind-whipped and sunburnt. "Can I…can we talk someplace?"

* * *

_**April 23, 2009** _

"You need to eat."

Jill sat across from Wesker, staring down at her untouched plate of alfredo - limp, pale noodles, and lumpy sauce made from a box she'd found in the pantry. She poked at a gelatinous clump with her fork, ignoring him.

The television behind her showed nothing but snow. A robotic voice spoke between the screech of emergency codes.

"National state of emergency...US Department of Defense has issued...contagious disease...mandatory curfews imposed...warning effective until further notice…"

Live broadcasting from the States had gone silent nearly a week ago. The alert played on a loop now, occasionally broken up by the static of the weakening signal.

"You haven't eaten in two days," he pressed, growing more irritated. Between her bulletproof silence and the shrill, piercing emergency message, he was certain his nerves were frayed beyond repair.

"I'm not hungry," Jill finally said. Her answer was clipped short. She dropped her fork, and it clattered against the plate.

He leaned back in his chair, inhaling sharply, closing his eyes. He fought the urge to raise a hand and massage his temples at the rising pressure. He supposed he could force-feed her, if she refused to cooperate...or he could work to repair the P30 device, now just a tangle of tubes and needles…

But this was no silent rebellion. This was no defiant stand against him, against his plan. She had walked alongside him each step of the way, terse and tense…

...and now she seemed drained. Simply drained. Pale and limp, fading a little more each day. She snapped at him every so often, or glared, or bristled. Little bursts of rage that seemed to awaken her.

Otherwise, she wilted.

She stood abruptly, the table rattling as she pushed away. She turned towards the door, leaving the plate full of food.

"Where are you going?" He narrowed his eyes on her as she crossed the room.

"To check on the others," she answered, not bothering to turn around. She passed through the door, slipping around the corner.

 _The others,_ who had just been checked two hours ago. If that. There had been no alerts, no reason to believe their condition was anything but stable. But he would find her there in an hour, or two, or three, illuminated by the eerie glow of the room. He'd find her staring down into the concave glass, watching the liquid bubble and flow, watching chests expand and compress, listening to the rhythm of the monitors.

He drummed his fingertips on the wood grain. The emergency message buzzed behind him.

They were both moths. Dull and brown and starving, drawn to the same unnatural source of light. They threw themselves against the glass again, and again, and again.

 _Desperate,_  he thought, rising from the table to follow her.

 _Futile,_  he thought, and the word snagged beneath his skin like a barbed hook.

* * *

_**July 2, 2009** _

They walked slowly together, Claire picking at a calico scallop shell she'd plucked from the shallow surf. They were painfully quiet; Claire had no idea how to ask, or  _what_ to ask, or where to begin. She wondered if it was even worth asking.

There was a chance that no one would ever find out.

There was a chance - a  _big_ chance - that it might not work.

Could he impregnate a human? Was that possible, this late in the game? Maybe not. Maybe he couldn't even —

"It's you, isn't it?" Jill's voice was raspy and deep.

"I'm… sorry?" Claire asked, feigning confusion.

"He's going to use you first," Jill said. She sounded strange - almost disappointed, or sad.

They stopped walking. The sand felt very cold under Claire's feet as the sun sank down into the ocean. She put her hands on her hips, tightening her fist around the shell, fighting the urge to cross her arms over her chest. Fighting the urge to run. Instead, she worried at the inside of her cheek.

Jill's eyes were so clear and hard that they barely seemed blue. They were glacial. She remembered the way they were years ago - a sparkling shade of crystal blue, lively and dynamic. Not at all like the empty ice that stared back at her now. Unblinking. Unfeeling.

When Claire couldn't stand it anymore, she turned and looked out to the horizon.

Jill stepped closer, and Claire felt her heat at her shoulder. Little foaming waves rolled up around their ankles and sank away again.

The early stirrings of tears tingled behind Claire's eyes. She squinted the sensation away. The rippled edges of the shell cut into her palm. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't cry over this, over  _him._  He would never make her cry; she wouldn't  _give_  him that power.

Behind her, Jill sighed.

Claire threw her head back, dropping the shell, and laced her fingers behind her neck. A desperate, dejected sob pushed its way up her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, the tears finally welling up and spilling over her hot cheeks.

"It won't be like that, Claire."

"Like how?" She wiped at her face with heel of her palms. Her hands trembled.

"It won't be that bad."

"Fuck you!" Claire nearly shouted. "He's going…" Her chest heaved, her words nearly slurring through her agony. "He's going to  _rape_  me tonight and all you can come up with is some smug bullshit like ' _it won't be that bad'_? Really, Jill? That's all you got for me?" Her eyelashes were matted with tears.

"He won't rape you," she said quietly. "He won't hurt you."

Claire recoiled. "He won't…" She trailed off in disbelief. "He won't hurt  _me_? Listen to yourself! Look at you!" She gestured wildly to Jill's chest. To the ring of puckered scars there - faded to a duller shade of pink and red, but still striking against her pale skin. Still angry, still raw.

Jill ignored the gesture, and stared at the setting sun, a hazy shade of scarlet hanging over the quiet ocean. She shook her head. "I think…maybe…it's all behind him now."

She sounded eerily distant when she spoke, as if her voice and her thoughts were coming from a thousand miles away.

She sounded hollow. Numb.

_Used._

Claire couldn't hold back her sharp bark of a laugh, still half-choked with tears. It was absurd. It was all fucking  _absurd._ Jill saying it was all  _behind_ him now, while she stared out at the ocean like some kind of broken puppet with tangled strings and limp limbs. Tossed aside when he was finished. So Claire laughed - a mixture of fury, fear, sadness, everything - and the sound scratched her throat. "God, he just fuckin'...he  _ruined_  you, didn't he, Jill?"

She was met with silence.

* * *

_**May 4, 2009** _

"I want to go under."

Wesker ignored her, or didn't hear her at all, his shining red eyes trained on the wall of monitors. He'd been sitting behind his great desk forever, it seemed, watching and waiting. The ship lurched and its steel belly groaned. An old styrofoam cup of coffee tumbled to the grated floor.

He didn't even notice.

One screen was a Japanese news channel - she recognized the colorful logo. The station had long since gone off the air and there was nothing left but static and the company's characters. Another screen blared out muddled and frantic German. Germany had held out better than its European cousins, and the occasional live broadcast flickered on and off the screen, an unsteady signal. Today, tonight, whenever…there was a live feed of a riot. The camera, jostled and unsteady, panned in on the blank and wide-eyed face of a man who had been trampled to death. A line of blood trickled from his open mouth.

"I want to go to sleep."

He sighed, a sound of heavy exasperation. "Then go to bed, Jill," he said flatly, still transfixed on the collapse of society, laid out before him on a patchwork of screens.

She took a step closer to him. "I need you to put me under."

He finally turned his glare on her. " _Put you under_?" He snapped.

She swallowed, and nodded.

He stared up at her. His glare deepened.

"No."

"Wesker—"

"No." He focused his attention on the screens again. "Unfortunately, I require your assistance in maintaining—"

"You have the infected...the majini. A hundred of them," she argued softly, her voice hoarse with disuse.

He slammed his fist down on the desk; dirty plates and bowls and utensils rattled, accumulated over the weeks he'd spent in morbid observation of humanity's last stand. Curiously, the force of his blow didn't reduce the desk to crumpled metal - something that would have happened just a few weeks ago. It only shook on its legs, and papers rustled, and the wooden floor creaked.

"I will  _not_ …depend…on the aid...of the unworthy," he ground out between clenched teeth.

The truth of the matter, she knew, was that he had lost the majini. They had silently mutinized the month before, shortly after the night Excella had…

Jill's eyes cut away from Wesker, the last few months flashing and tangling across her memory.

One hundred and twenty-three of the infected had migrated from their assigned positions to the lower levels of the ship.

One hundred and twenty-three men and women were huddled below, waiting for landfall.

They didn't fear him anymore…and they certainly didn't need him.

He was no  _god._

He was weak.

And without  _her_ …his lowly little Jill Valentine, his marionette, his automaton...he would be very much alone.

"Will you put me to sleep...Sir?"

"You can repeat your  _insipid_  request as much as you like!" he shouted, finally roused to standing. "I won't be swayed!"

She blinked slowly, her hollow gaze on his face. She took a centering breath. "Please. Captain."

He shook his head. "Oh, that's cheap," he sneered at her, his eyes narrowing. "Even for  _you_ , Jill."

She stared at him a moment longer, the air around him seeming to tremble with his rage. A sight that would frighten anyone else. But after years of it, of  _him,_  she nodded, her eyes drifting away.

"Go to bed," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Go to bed, Miss Valentine…sleep well. You'll feel better in the morning."

She turned, as if to leave. But she didn't leave - instead, she stopped at the edge of the desk, picking up one of his discarded knives.

He watched as she considered the weight of it for a moment.

He watched as she schooled her features into a blank, empty mask.

 _Blank and empty._ Words that had defined her month after month.  _Blank and empty._ Words that stretched endlessly before her. The blank, empty ocean all around them. The blank, empty world behind them. The blank, empty ship swallowing them up.

The blank, empty buzzing in her head.

Blank and empty and never the same again.

Without warning, seemingly without thought, she forcefully slashed at her right wrist - a sudden, violent movement.

The strangeness of it seemed to stun them both. He gaped at her where she stood, a glistening trail of red running down her pale flesh, pooling in her palm and painting rivulets down to her fingertips. Her forearm bled profusely from the jagged, clumsy wound. His eyes were wide with the horror she'd inflicted on body. His thin lips moved, twitched, as if he meant to speak - perhaps say her name:  _Jill_.

She blinked at him, and then looked back down to her arm. She switched the knife to her bloody hand, preparing to —

He was on her in an instant, before she could take another breath. He held her bleeding arm in the air, his fingers squeezing so tightly around her wrist she was sure the bones were going to shatter like glass. She howled, a long, keening, mournful wail, and the knife fell to the metal floor.

"Let me go!" she begged, arching up, trying desperately to escape him. "Let me go…"

"Enough!" He bellowed, so close to her ear that her head throbbed with his baritone voice.

She collapsed against him, sinking to her knees, her strangled wrist still caught in his grasp. She clung to his pant leg, her skinny, sickly fingers twisting in the fabric. She buried her face in the heat of his thigh and wept.

She could feel him breathing - quick and shallow in his panic. Hot tears, so odd, so  _foreign_ after years of chemically-induced apathy, rolled down her cold cheeks. She tried one last time to free her arm.

"Stop!" He barked, and she flinched.

After a few moments, his grip on her poor wrist softened. He cleared his throat and began again, quietly. "Stop. Let it clot."

They stayed that way for minutes. For hours. She didn't know. A slave on her knees before her master. Her arm grew numb, but the pulsing in the gash slowed and eventually stopped.

Just as Wesker took a steadying breath, and the tension in the captain's cabin seemed to ease, the deafening sound of electronic static crackled the air.

She started, turning her face against his leg so that she could see the wall of monitors.

Germany's broadcast had turned to snow.

The ship hummed and lurched… and there was nothing else.

"I'll put you to sleep with the others now, Jill," he whispered.

* * *

_**July 2, 2009** _

Claire skipped the group meeting that night, waving on Rebecca and Sheva as they passed her on her way back to her cabin. She kept her head down, doing her best to shield her reddened eyes from them as she forced a quick, tight smile for appearances. She heard their murmurings as they walked in the other direction, toward the resort clubhouse.

_Is she alright?_

_Are any of us alright?_

_Yeah...fair enough..._

Claire shut the front door behind her, leaning heavily against it. She slid down to the floor, wrapping her arms around her legs.

They would all be there. Chris, Jill, Leon, Barry. The little family she'd known for years. They'd ask where she was, what was wrong. They'd talk about rations and inventories, about scouting expeditions, about repairs and maintenance and dividing up the next day's labor.

And they would all leave, heading towards their cabins for a comfortable night's sleep.

And she would be here.

Waiting for him to come to her.

Waiting for her life - what was left of it - to come crashing to a halt.

She stayed huddled against the door, her face buried in her knees, her thighs pressed to her chest, for what seemed a lifetime.

The clock above the enormous sofa chimed softly. It was meant to be melodic and comforting.

It sounded like a death knell.

One chime. Two. She felt the noise more than she heard it, metal striking hollow metal. It rattled through her joints and left her muscles aching.

Three. Four.

Her temples throbbed, and she closed her eyes tighter, curled into herself tighter.

Five.

She took a shaky breath. She focused on the smell of salt. Sand. Wood. Sweat. Unfamiliar things, wrong things. Things that shouldn't be in her world.

Six.

She was strong. She had been through worse. She was strong. Her jaw trembled, and she clenched her hand tight, and her nails bit into the skin of her palm, and she told herself she was  _strong-_

Seven chimes.

Claire screamed then, pounding her fists against the woodgrain until blood dripped from her knuckles.

She didn't feel the pain.

* * *

Wesker gripped the side of the sink and stared at himself in the gilded bathroom mirror. He lifted his left arm to glance at his watch.

_9:36._

He flipped the handle of the golden faucet up. Warm water poured from the spigot like a bubbling fountain. He let it run into his cupped hands and splashed his face.

He would go to her very soon. Lay with her. Hopefully put a child in her womb on the first try. Their timing could not be more exact; there was such a narrow window for conception, and he had found the way to squeeze through.

_How strange._

_Claire Redfield. The most compatible out of them all._ He would never have imagined  _her_ ; the little sister who always hovered on the edges of her beloved brother's story. The girl Chris fought to protect, begged to save. He couldn't have written a revenge so perfect.

 _It would be very clinical. Very clean._  He had decided it the moment he'd run her panel and found it favorable against his.  _He would bring himself to hardness, and then to brink of crisis…a quick insertion, no more than a few seconds. No stroking, no unnecessary touching, nothing like that._

_Not for her dignity, no…but for his._

He looked up into his own eyes, and watched his pupils contract until they were nothing but slits beneath the hard vanity lights. Slowly, he tilted his head and examined his wet skin. He traced the very edge of his hairline with a finger.

His hair was lightening from the days spent outside, working near the intense reflection of the ocean; it was nearly white now. There was a sunspot emerging on one of his sharp cheekbones, just under his eye socket. He was returning to something of a mortal state in the absence of the PG-67 A/W.

 _Things change so quickly_ , he thought. He was softer, slower, simpler...and the devolution had seemingly taken no time at all. He was surprised that it neither disturbed nor enraged him.

But when it was over…when the girl's pregnancy was assured…he would resume his regular doses of the serum. He would ascend once again.

And things would be as they were always meant to be.

His gaze traveled lower, over his throat, his collar bone. He paused and pressed his fingertips to a small scar on his bare chest. It was all that was left of the events before his rebirth in Raccoon City. One mark - one stubborn, defiant patch of skin that refused to heal in sync with the rest of his body. Pale and smooth.

He stood very still, mesmerized by the old wound. He barely breathed. He could still remember the pain...the last intense, crippling pain he had felt. He could remember the way it seared through his chest. The way his skin ripped and his muscles tore. The way his body seemed to disintegrate, unravel, and the way the world bled to black…

And then he awoke.

And he was new.

And the mark had never left him.

Several hard knocks startled him out of his reverie. His hand fell from his chest. He slapped the faucet off and yanked a hand towel down from a rack.

"Who is it?" he snapped, peering out from the bathroom.

"Take a guess,  _asshole_."

His jaw clenched. He stormed to the door, fumbling with the sliding lock, and then the deadbolt. He threw it open and came face to face with Claire.

"I told you I would come to  _you_ , Ms. Redfield," he hissed, wrenching her inside by her arm.

"Don't touch me!" She struggled with him as he pulled her into the villa. She tore her arm free, cradling it as if he'd burned her.

He looked out the door down the empty boardwalk - left and right - and then finally closed it, locking them in.

He turned to her, glaring. "Did anyone see you?"

She glared back, still rubbing her arm where he'd grabbed her. "No. Jesus Christ."

"I said  _ten_. In  _your_  cabin," he hissed.

She rolled her eyes. "Wrecked your plans? Showing up a whole twenty minutes early?" She looked around, crossing her arms over her chest. "What were you doing? Gussying up for my rape?" She jerked her head towards the bathroom as she spoke. "Really thoughtful of you."

He snorted, his lip curling. "You're just like your  _imbecile_  brother. The both of you - unending idiocy."

"Oh…fuck… _off,_  Wesker," she drawled, her eyes rolling to the ceiling.

He smelled the air, his nose wrinkling at the sting of alcohol. "How much have you had to drink?"

"Not enough for this shit." She looked at him boldly, and he knew she was trying very hard to appear…tough. She wavered, wobbling on her own feet even as she tried to stand still.

"You're inebriated," he said, frowning.

Unashamed, she pinched her thumb and forefinger together. "A little." She reached for the hem of her tank top and began pulling it up. "Where're we going here? Couch?"

He watched her. He watched her bare the swath of smooth, pale flesh of her flat midriff…the smattering of brown freckles coming to a point at her small, protruding navel. He blinked and took a breath, licking his lips. "Stop."

She managed to get her top off and stood before him in only a black sports bra. She balled the shirt in her hands. Her hair was thrown back in a messy ponytail; curls of golden-red sprung up all over her head. "You ready?" She belched into the crook of her elbow. "Come on. Let's get this show on the road." She clapped her hands together sharply, and nodded at him, eyeing his clothes. She began to work on the fly of her shorts.

She stopped when his hand closed over her wrist - as gently as he could manage.

She looked up at him.

He raised his eyebrows and then said, very slowly: "Claire."

" _No_ ," she argued, and stumbled away. "I'm not waiting. Now or never."

He narrowed his reptilian eyes at her.

"What?" she snarled.

His scowl flitted to her raw knuckles.

Like a child, she hid her hands behind her back, out of his sight.

"What have you done to yourself?" he asked, his voice flat.

"What the hell do you care?" she shot back. And then she paused, time seeming to stand still between them. She took a deep, shaky breath.

Wesker's face fell in exasperation. "Are you going to be sick?"

" _No_ ," she cut him off. She wheezed and hesitated, and then bent over. Her bruised fingers clawed at her knees. "I just…I just need a sec."

* * *

He stood in the bathroom doorway, leaning on the frame.

She'd been slumped over his bidet for the better part of fifteen minutes. She spat into the bowl, breathing heavily. "I can't," she said, her words echoing around the porcelain basin.

"You must." He let his head rest against the cool wood, listening to her groan.

"Can you turn that light off?"

He didn't move.

"Fucking  _please_?!" she cried wetly, a thick rope of saliva dripping into the bidet.

He reached across the doorway and casually flicked the vanity lights off. He tested the other switches, leaving on the fan and the dim shower globe.

"God…" She hid her face in the crook of her arm.

"Better to get it over with," he said, closing his eyes.

"I can't."

"You can."

She moaned, sweating profusely, her skin glistening in the strange yellow light from the corner of the bathroom. "I just wanna throw up," she whispered.

He ran his hand through his hair and crouched down next to her. She flinched. "Use your fingers," he suggested.

She looked at him, horrified. "No!"

"You've spent a lifetime fighting monsters, Ms. Redfield. Gagging yourself really shouldn't be  _this_  dramatic."

Her eyes watered and her chin quivered. She looked absolutely  _pitiful._

He sighed. She was growing more intoxicated by the minute; he wondered if she'd had enough to poison herself.

"I hate it here," she said, and he could hear the spit in her mouth. "I hate it...so...so much."

He furrowed his brow in mock interest, her words barely registering as he considered his next step.

"I just…I hate you. I hate you...more than  _anything._  You're so…fucking…fucking…" She stared at him, her eyes hazy as she lost her train of thought. "You're just…  _disgusting_  and —"

Her reflexes were so delayed that she didn't even resist the hand on the back of her neck, directing her over the bidet, and two fingers of the other hand slipping into her mouth, over her soft tongue, past her teeth, which wisely did not bite down. He touched the back of her slimy throat, his nails barely scratching the wet flesh there. He felt her entire body jerk as soon as he made contact.

He pulled away in time for her vomit, unobstructed. What seemed to be an entire bottle of red wine, and nothing else, splashed into the bowl. He shook out his hand and grimaced.

She sobbed between agonized moans. Her expression was a twist of shock, and pain, and something like betrayal at his deception.

And perhaps a bit of relief.

He carefully brushed her ponytail aside. "A little more, hmm?"

"I'm  _fine_." She pushed at him and gulped, shivering even in the oppressive heat. "I'm done."

"I don't think so." His hand was guiding her again by nape of her neck.

"No," she keened. "Please, no…" Her bloodied fingers clung to the lip of the bidet, her arms tense and straight with her fear.

Despite her protests, her caterwauling, her white-knuckled grip...she ultimately  _let_  him open up her body again.

And he knew she would never admit it, but the very small, rational part of her must have been grateful.

* * *

_"Miss Redfield."_

She shifted and frowned, nuzzling deeper into the pillow.

_"Miss Redfield."_

The disembodied voice again. More insistent.  _What a strange dream_ , she thought in her haze of half-awakeness. A dream about the world crumbling down around her. A dream about arriving in a quiet little paradise, far away from the chaos. A dream about her friends, all safe, all together...and the bargain that was struck to keep them that way…

She turned over, wrapping the sheet more tightly around herself, her eyes screwed shut to keep the bright morning sun out.

" _Claire!_ " The voice was clear and loud that time.

She sat nearly straight up, gasping, and when she saw him standing over her, she recoiled, pressing herself flat against the back of the couch. Her chest heaved. She pushed her hair out of her face.

"Where am I?" she asked, wide-eyed and shaking.

He was cradling a tea cup and just… _looking_  at her.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee was thick and nauseating in the villa. She coughed as her stomach churned, and wiped her mouth with the back of her trembling hand. Her head  _pounded_. Her foot bumped against a decorative ceramic bowl on the floor next to the couch, thankfully empty.  _How many times had she thrown up?_  "What time is it?"

"It's time for me to join the others…and for you to get dressed," he said, dismissively. He went to the kitchenette and set the teacup on the countertop.

She pulled the sheet up to her chest, covering her sports bra. Her face and throat flushed hotly. She looked around his cabin then, her mind still torn between theoretical trust and mortal terror in his presence. Her eyes drifted to a familiar dark face with yellow eyes. Her traitorous black cat - who she'd shared her little apartment with for years before The End, who had, at some point during her months-long sleep, become  _his_ cat - sat on a shelf inside the great bureau in the farthest corner of the room. It licked its paw lazily. She glared at it.

And then her attention went to his bed. A big, beautiful, white-dressed four-poster, like the one in her suite; it was unmade. She swallowed, her nostrils flaring.

"Did we…"

"No," he replied curtly.

Her body sagged in relief. She reached for her tank top, laid over the arm of the couch. She winced at her stiffness, her back cracking in protest. "What do we do now?"

" _We_  aren't going to do anything," he sneered, patting down the pockets in his cargo shorts. " _You_  will put your clothes on and leave in twenty minutes." He paused to glance at her. "Discreetly."

He was searching for something, walking into the kitchen and back out again, his quick, angry eyes darting around the villa. "I shouldn't have to remind you of what is at stake here for your friends and family, Ms. Redfield."

She glowered at him, squinting in the column of warm, tropical light that fell through his bay windows.

"And now you've wasted an entire cycle with your…  _tricks_." He snatched his sunglasses off a bedside table and unfolded the arms, readying them. "It will be at least four weeks until we can attempt this again."

She stood, shedding the bedsheet. "You said 24 hours."

He blinked at her, and she saw how he fought not to let his eyes slip down to her chest. "I did. Yes," he said haltingly.

"It hasn't been 24 hours. We can still do it." She tossed her shirt behind her and squared her shoulders.

He seemed almost to smile at her bravery. "No."

"Yes."

"Ms. Redfield —"

"Now. Before they notice we're both missing," she said, and her voice, surprisingly, did not waver.

He took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck, staring at her. She imagined the gears turning in his head. He looked ill.

After a moment had passed, he shrugged to signal his tired consent.

"I need Listerine or something," she mumbled and turned towards the bathroom.

"Why? I am absolutely not ki—"

"Because I can only taste vomit!" she barked at him.

He stiffened. "The medicine cabinet. And don't you dare put your lips on it."

* * *

He slowly sat on the edge of the enormous bed and turned his sunglasses end-over-end on his thigh. His heart, the disobedient wretch that it was, thundered in his chest. His blood felt as if it were running too hot or too thick or too fast, and he uselessly willed it to stop pounding, but it would not, it  _could_ not.

Behind the bathroom door, he heard the muffled sound of the toilet flushing.

He found it difficult to breathe, and although he hadn't eaten, he felt as if there was something lodged in his throat, choking him.

The faucet ran.

 _What was it that had him so thoroughly unnerved?_ he wondered.  _Cessation of the boosters, perhaps? Or something else...the newness, the wildness of this place? The claustrophobia of being trapped with the idiots he'd have happily left for dead?_

He tossed the sunglasses back on the side table and rubbed his hands together, frowning at the clammy, sticky feel of his own skin. His knee bounced anxiously.

Claire Redfield would be the first to bring forth the new generation. The first to put his plan into action. The first to secure his ascension. His  _return._

And though he had known - somewhat abstractly - what that  _plan_ would entail, his stomach dropped as he realized what was required of him.

The joy he had felt at such perfect, accidental revenge was all but gone in anticipation of the very real act.

And against his thigh, his willful cock was furiously... _humiliatingly..._ harder than it had been in years. It was due in part to the lack of the PG-67 A/W, he was sure. Every cell in his body slowly reverting back it's repulsive human state…his wants becoming desperate, vile  _needs_.

He stared at himself, disbelieving; his shorts were stretched treasonously over his groin, which positively throbbed, engorged with blood. He felt light-headed, a pressure building in his body that he hadn't experienced in over a decade.

And all because of  _her_.

The thought of her...the thought of the freckles on her chest, the constellation of them he had seen so much of the night before as he helped her to the couch, laid her down, and watched the pleasing sway of her breasts. He'd been fascinated by the way the flirtatious little spots seemed painted on her pale skin, how they disappeared beneath the black sports bra, and emerged again, coming to a perfect point above her navel, like a compass, beckoning  _this way_... And her stomach - taut and smooth; the dim light catching the fine peach fuzz on her lower belly.

His rebellious body fairly hummed with the promise of touching her.

Mortified, he ground his teeth.

_Why did it have to be her? Whywhywhy…_

The bathroom door opened.

He blanched.

She flipped the light switch off and walked down the little hallway to the main room, her bare feet silent on the bamboo floors. She stopped there, on the threshold, picking at her nails. They stared at each other.

He forced himself to stand. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he stuffed them deeply into the pockets of his shorts. He realized, suddenly, that she could easily see the tented outline of his turncoat arousal, and for the first time in years…he blushed.

_Would she see?_

_Would she_ see… _stop sniveling,_  he chided his own thoughts.

_Pathetic._

_Disgusting._

_Pull yourself together._

He squared his shoulders, and straightened his spine.  _Clinical and clean,_ he reminded himself, urging the flush of blood to leave his face, his neck, his chest.  _Clinical and clean._

There was nothing to think about. There was nothing to worry about. It was a simple biological act, and one that came naturally to all creatures. One that would be over quickly. His body - though it hadn't been touched in years, though it felt as if his insides might burst from his too-tight skin - would respond exactly as he needed it to. Exactly as he  _willed_ it too.

 _Clinical and clean._ A kind of mantra he repeated over and over, trying futilely to push any thoughts of freckles and peach fuzz to the far corners of his mind.

It was much too late to worry about hiding his cock, so he falsified his pride and simply held her gaze, challenging her to make the first move.

She cleared her throat and crossed her arms. "I think you've gotta…unzip…at least. For this to work, I mean."

He opened his mouth to say something - a clever retort, a snort, a laugh…anything at all. But no sound would come out. He looked down then, watching his hands as they worked of their own volition, unbuttoning the fly and then peeling the zipper open in slow motion. His boxer-briefs showed blue plaid through the  _v_  of his undone shorts. He smoothed over the front, making sure the panels of soft material stayed in place over his defiant erection.

_Clinical and clean._

She stood very still in exactly the same spot she had the night before, and gnawed at her thumbnail.

The cat watched them both, its yellow stare volleying back and forth, impassive.

 _Breathe_ ,  _you fool_ , he thought to himself, and swallowed. He toed out of his tennis shoes, one at time, and then nudged them away. He gestured to the pile of pillows and sheets.

She went to the other side of the bed. They did not look at each as they climbed in, lifting the light comforter together and sliding under it with unsettling choreography. He eased back with a deep breath, laying his head on an overstuffed pillow and staring straight up at the mosquito netting above them; he felt her do the same.

The villa was already unbearably hot in the morning sun; it would only grow more humid and heavy as the day wore on. The back of his neck was damp with perspiration. He listened to call of sea birds flying over the water, listened to the waves lap at the pilings beneath the cabin.

He was afraid to move, and he hated himself for it...and he hated her more.

Beside him, the mattress shifted and dipped with whatever she was doing. He snuck a careful glance at her from the corner of his eye. She sighed as she fidgeted under the covers. She lifted her hips and arched up, whatever she was fussing with kept out of sight.

With every movement, the comforter brushed against his groin and made him wince. Each drag of the fabric felt amplified against his skin. Each individual thread felt like a needle scratching along a membrane that was too thin, too delicate. Too  _sensitive._ He was suddenly made of nothing but exposed, aching nerves, and he clenched his teeth tighter.  _Tighter._ It was beyond agitating - the pull of the sheets, the rustling of her movement, the way she shimmied and the way the bed bowed beneath her and the damned  _comforter,_ the unbearable, featherlight friction that wasn't enough, that wouldn't end-

"What are you doing?" he managed to snap, his voice cracking.

She contracted to a tight ball under the blanket and turned her head on the pillow to glare at him. "What do you think I'm doing?"

She straightened her legs out again and then dropped something onto the hardwood floor. He heard metal  _ping_ against the surface.

_Her shorts. Her jean shorts._

_She had taken off her shorts._

He blinked and looked up, his hands balling in the fitted sheet, his very  _being_  trying to sink into the bedding - sink down through the mattress and the box springs and the frame and then through the floor, sink forever until he was free of her, of the island, of existence.

The comforter rasped the underside of his barely-clothed cock once more and his stomach muscles clenched painfully in response. He was close - he was  _too_  close, so close that the entire endeavor would be over before it started. He licked his lips and his fingers tightened in the sheet.

"We must do this  _now_ , Ms. Redfield," he said, trying desperately to keep his voice even when he wanted to howl.

She stared at him blankly. And then a look of understanding washed over her face…followed closely by anger. " _Oh, come on_ ," she growled at him, pushing herself up to hands and knees, yanking the covers with her. "Jesus Christ…"

He screwed his eyes shut, desperate to block out the image that had already burned itself into his brain - Claire Redfield, the comforter wrapped around her bare waist, crawling over him so that she could take him inside of her.

She straddled his hips, squeezing his thighs closed with her own. The mattress shifted as she planted her hands on either side of his arms and brought her pelvis to his, as if she was lining up a driver. Through his clothes, he could feel the coolness of her on his overheated flesh.

"You're not gonna come if I touch you, are you? I have to… pull it out," she said, sitting back on her heels. The disgust in her voice was palpable.

His eyes shot open and he grabbed her offending hand before it had an opportunity to snake down between them. "Let me," he hissed. He looked up and studied the blue tray ceiling through the netted canopy; he looked anywhere but her eyes, or her face, or her body, as he pushed aside fabric of his boxers and set himself free.

There was nothing but the sound of the waves then, and their collective breath held tight in their lungs. A second, or a year, or a century passed in their deafening stillness.

He very nearly gulped, his unblinking gaze trained firmly on crown moulding. "Is there a problem?" he asked, the words like acid in his mouth.

"I have the right to  _look_ at it before you put it in me, don't I?"

His jaw clenched, and he worried for a moment that he might break all of his teeth.

In the very edge of his vision, he saw her shift and rewrap the comforter around them both so that the lower extremities of their bodies were hidden from view. She leaned over him again, her fire-red hair falling over one of her speckled shoulders and tickling his throat.

"Hold it up," she said quietly.

He was so embarrassingly hard that he didn't need the support, but he squeezed the base of his cock, staving off the flow of blood and premature ejaculation as best he could. His chest burned, reminding him to breathe, and he took in air as if he was drowning.

She brought one hand to her mouth, and he knew she was spitting on her fingers, improvising a lubricant. She reached beneath the comforter and rubbed herself with her own saliva, her knuckles grazing his.

And then, with a practiced dexterity, her hands were reaching out, bracing herself against the headboard. He felt her tilting her hips, adjusting her angle above him. Her hair swept across his throat, his face, catching on his lower lip. He didn't dare move to brush it away.

And she began to lower herself onto him.


	2. A Poor Liar

 

* * *

  _"In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost."_  
  
_-Dante Alighieri, "Inferno"_

* * *

 

_**March 13, 2009** _

His hands felt clammy on her skin.

It was hard to focus. Her bedframe squeaked, and her back ached, and rain pounded against the apartment windows. Distant lightning split the black sky.

Neil hadn't shaved. It had been two days, maybe three. His stubble scraped against her cheek, against her neck, as his lips carved a desperate trail down her skin.

It grated at her.

She curled her hands to fists in the sheets, turning her face towards the wall.

"Fuck," he breathed, and his breath was hot in her ear. Hot and damp. The fingers of his left hand dug into the skin of her hip. He rose, tilting his pelvis, drawing her closer as he thrust deeper between her legs.

 _Fuck_ was all he said.

 _Fuck_ with cheap tequila on his tongue, sharp and sickening. She could taste it when he kissed her. It tasted like college. Tasted like rough, early mornings. Tasted like mistakes. Desperation.

Running.

Stumbling.

He arched his back, and he pumped into her, and her eyes traced a scratch on the wall. Old, yellowed wood peeked out beneath the powdery grey paint.

They'd fucked here a dozen times. Two dozen. She'd pulled him down to the bed by the collar of his shirt. He'd carried her in when she was drunk and stumbling. They'd rolled towards each other in the soft blue-black hours of early morning and done something that didn't feel like  _fucking_ at all.

But this was different.

This was empty. This was red-rimmed eyes, and scratchy throats, and sweaty palms. Dark, humid room. Hurried footsteps upstairs, and furniture dragging across the floor. A dog barking threateningly down the street.

The television on in the living room, casting a glow down the hallway.

She strained to hear the muffled voice of the CNN reporter. The words were lost as Neil's skin slapped against her own. A wet, ripe sound. It made her sick.

She craned her neck further, twisting beneath him. He groaned. She ground her teeth.

It had been two weeks since the news came from Africa. Kijuju had fallen. The continent was splitting, fraying at the seams. Thousands dead. Thousands more dying. Thousands infected.

No word from Chris.

No word from him for days. And the virus kept spreading, hour by hour, mile by mile. A ticking stopwatch she couldn't read the time on.

_This was wrong. This was all wrong. He'd pulled her into bed. It was supposed to be passionate, desperate, their last chance. She should have been sinking her fingers into his skin. She should have been memorizing the contour of every muscle. She should have been crying his name with tears on her cheeks, holding him like he was the only fucking thing left to hold in the world-_

"Look at me," Neil whispered. His hand rose from her hip, resting against her cheek. The pads of his fingers were rough. He lifted his hand higher, tangling it in her hair, and her scalp ached as he pulled.

She'd liked it the first time he did it. A lifetime ago.

_Look at me._

His hips bucked again as he slipped out of her - too much K-Y. Her thighs were greasy.

_Fuck. Look at me._

He moved sluggishly, like a thick fog curled around him, clinging to his limbs.

_After days of turmoil, desperate pleas from Cairo have gone silent. Borders in the Middle East remain closed, and officials fear-_

She knew what she'd see, if she turned her head. She'd been watching him for twenty minutes now. His eyes were hollow and glassy. His face was sallow, sunken. He stared down at her in a way she couldn't name - lost, hungry, only half-himself.

He looked haunted.

It was how anyone would look, if they watched the world slip between their fingers, and crumble out from under them. She imagined she had the same look on her own face. She'd been avoiding mirrors.

He mounted an erratic rhythm, pounding deeper into her, and she half-heartedly lifted her hips towards his. His breath hitched. His lips found the dip of her collarbone, and his tongue felt slick, sticky.

She felt numb beneath him.

"Claire," he moaned into her neck, into the tumble of her sweat-soaked hair. His body tensed and shivered. "Please."

The television cut to footage of gunfire. The sound of it echoed through the living room. A man screamed. The light flashed white and red and white again, reflecting off the hallway floorboards.

Her mouth tasted like copper.

"Christ, just look at me. Please." The words cracked as he spoke.

She closed her eyes as he came.

* * *

_**July 3, 2009** _

Wesker felt heat. Pleasant, pulsing heat. Skin against the tip of his cock - skin like velvet, barely brushing as she sunk down a fraction of an inch. An agonizing, aching inch, enveloping the sensitive head of his shaft. She was hardly dripping, but she was warm, and soft, and the pressure made his breath hitch...and he set his jaw, staring into the blank middle distance, his hands like claws digging into the bed.

She stopped.

She held herself above him,  _around_ him, her thighs trembling with tension.

"Is your dick gonna do anything weird?" she asked. "Tell me now."

He nearly sat up, meeting her great blue eyes with a glare.

She looked down at him, unfazed. "I had to ask."

And then, she was rolling her hips - slight, barely perceptible movements, taking a bit more of his body into her own with every pass. He stared at the ceiling through the gauzy tent and counted each motion, counted every stir of her hips like he counted every wave of the tide as it washed over his feet. She was cooler than him by at least fifteen degrees, and while she wasn't exactly  _wet_ , she wasn't dry either. Once the entire length of him was fitted tightly, safely in the strange space of her, it felt unnatural and familiar to him at the same time; their joining was violating and pleasurable, and the competing sensations confused him.

She let go of a rush of breath when their pubic bones bumped together, the final inch of his cock buried. And then she stared down at him, wide-eyed, as if she couldn't believe what was happening.

In truth…his expression probably mirrored hers - a sort of stunned resignation. He knew he most likely felt strange to her - with his temperature running so high, perhaps his penis felt like a hot poker in her belly - he didn't know, he  _couldn't_  know; he hadn't had intercourse with anyone after The Change.

He turned his face away and tried to focus on the blue sky that stretched, dizzying and endless, over the blue water.  _Clinical and clean. Quick and sterile. Clinical and..._

Slowly, agonizingly so, she lifted her hips, and slid back down. Perhaps accidentally, or maybe reflexively, she pressed her palms to his chest and spread her fingers. He glanced at her. She wrenched her hands away from him as if he'd struck her for the contact. There was another tentative roll of her hips, and then she put her hands the headboard, so that she was leaning over him, and her breasts, still restrained in the infernally taunting bra, were very close to his face.

He begin to take quick, trembling breaths, and no matter how hard he tried to conceal it, he knew she could hear him, feel him between her tensing thighs, falling apart  _beneath_ her.

"How fast can you come?" she whispered.

He suddenly wished more than anything that he had taken the lead then, that he had climbed on top of  _her_  and been the one to penetrate, dominate. But he was paralyzed by his fear of an act he hadn't committed in so long, and he'd lain passively beneath her, letting her body  _consume_ his.

And then…he felt  _it_.

Her single, unnecessary comment dismantled his bitter arousal; his erection was slipping away with each retreating pump of his blood. He held his breath.  _Goddamn her._

The entire experience had reached its humiliating anti-climax, robbing him of what little dignity he had left on that god-forsaken island. Angrily, his self-control rushing back with the loss of his  _appetite_ , he glared at her.

"Wha-" she stammered, feeling him grow soft. "No…no no no.  _Don't_ ," she pleaded.

"It's over," he growled. "Get off me."

"No. We're  _not_  doing this again," she replied through gritted teeth.

She pushed him to the bed then, and rode him hard through several rough thrusts - no more testing pelvic rolls, no more gentle insertion. He grunted, shocked, and sank into the pillows under her force. Unthinking, his hands found her hips, hidden under the comforter bunched around the place where their bodies met. He nearly gasped at the feel of her skin, smooth and cool beneath the searing heat of his palms. He looked down at his arms, disappearing in the folds of the blanket, in disbelief at his wayward hands and the flesh yielding to his touch.

She rolled her hips again and he felt the powerful muscles of her thighs contract around his.

"Come on," she said to him, to herself. "Don't let it go...come on." She ground her pelvis to his and a drop of sweat beaded on her scalp, rolled down the bridge of her imperfect nose, and fell to his throat. He watched her work above him, stupefied and silent, barely cognizant of his own role in the scene. Her brilliant blue eyes were squeezed shut, and she humped his body with such determination, such drive, every bit of her admirably trained on the goal of keeping him hard enough to follow the damn thing through completion. 

Her efforts though, no matter how impressive, were in vain; he stayed embarrassingly fat and soft inside of her.

She slowed and then eventually stopped her ministrations, leaning back, her speckled shoulders sagging. She wiped her damp hair from her face and her neck, where it stuck to her glistening skin. He looked away, and swallowed.

"What do you like?" she asked breathlessly. "What is it? Tits? Ass?"

He sighed, staring out at the ocean. His hands fell away from her hips, away from her lovely painted skin and the strange chill of her. He'd been defeated and thoroughly humiliated by his body that morning, and Claire Redfield had been an intimate witness to it all. And now… _now_  she straddled him like he was a lame horse that wouldn't get up, whipping him with her taunts and mockery like she was wielding a crop.

For a moment - the briefest instant - his thoughts seemed to turn red at the edges, and he felt a shadow of the murderous rage that had fed him so many months ago.  _Dead girls couldn't tell anyone what had...or had not...transpired, could they?_

 _Think rationally_ , he corrected himself.  _There will be others, and not one second of this incident would matter in the grand scheme of things. Compatibility be damned, he would try another of those idiots and see if he couldn't_  -

From the corner of his eye, he saw the quick, furious movements of her fingers near her chest. His face settled into its natural scowl.

But the glower dropped when he saw her undoing the tiny eyehooks on the front of her sports bra.

Three of them. Small bits of metal clinging to one another, holding her flesh firmly in place, so far out of sight…

The first hook popped loose.

"Stop." The order was a hiss through his teeth.

She didn't answer, letting out an aggravated huff of air as she worked the second eyelet loose.

Though her skin was no more exposed than it had been a few moments ago, he suddenly felt as if the room was spinning. He tried to glare again. He tried to roll his eyes up towards the canopy, or back towards the sea, but they stayed wide, locked on her fingers - unearthly pale against the dark fabric - as they fussed with the final hook, slipping and catching. A nervous kind of clumsiness.

"Don't play the harlot, Claire," he said, struggling to sound  _disdainful_ when he was actually  _desperate._  The two of them must have made a pitiful sight. His prone body, his soft cock, the sweat dripping down her back, her thighs shuddering as she held herself above him, fumbling with her bra.

"Just do your fucking job," she muttered, wiggling the final clasp free.

He held his breath, still transfixed by the valley of her sternum. The spandex bra quivered with her heartbeat, barely covering her breasts.

His cock twitched, waking inside of her.

She must have felt it as well. Her eyes, cold with a steely kind of determination, focused on his.

Slowly, she eased the wide strap over one shoulder, and then the other. The bra slipped off her arm, onto the floor with her shorts. She looked down at him, her expression solemn in the suffocating silence of the villa. Her breasts were larger than he'd imagined...and how he  _hated_ himself for having ever imagined them in the first place. But even  _he_ had to admit that she was beautifully shaped - heavy and full and buoyant. The expanse of her naked skin, from her throat to her nipples, was calicoed with tawny freckles, exactly as he'd thought; the lovely round undersides of her breasts were unmarked alabaster. Her areolae were pale pink, barely pink at all, and puffy with what he could only assume was the same reluctant arousal he felt in his loins. Her nipples were small, nearly inverted.

His first thought nauseated him:  _would those nipples harden with suckling?_

His cock throbbed, roaring back to life. He was a helpless teenage boy beneath her.

Beneath Claire Redfield.

And he  _despised_ her passionately.

He despised the power she suddenly held over his weak, human body. He'd spent the better part of a decade immunizing himself against such witchcraft, setting himself  _above_ it all...and now that wild animal instinct rushed back, overtaking him with a force that seemed to knock the air from his lungs.

It felt new.

It felt familiar.

It felt wrong and right, vivid and surreal, so many things in between...

She rolled her hips, her eyes open and wide in all their blinding blueness. He saw a flash of concern on her face as she rose up, letting him slip nearly all the way out of the secret place between her legs…and then he was plunged into her cool-warmth again.

They both gasped, mirroring the other's look of shamed astonishment.

He was inside. All of him…every millimeter…was deep  _inside_  of her.

She arched her back and rocked down onto him again, slower this time, testing the depth of his cock. Testing how it stretched her walls. All the while, they looked at each other - shocked, and sickened, and something else.

_Something else._

As she rode him, he swore he felt her getting… _wetter_. Growing slicker all around him. The friction seemed to lessen with each successive thrust, until there was no resistance between them at all. He felt himself bump up against her cervix, and she unmistakably ground down on him so that he circled and massaged the deepest part of her. She carried on that way for a maddeningly long time, fucking his cock as far into herself as she could. It was almost… _greedy._ If he hadn't known much, much better, he might have thought...

Her head fell back, the messy waterfall of her copper hair tumbling over her shoulder, tangling about her neck, slick and shining with her sweat in early morning sunlight. He stared at her, unabashed. He stared at her vulnerable milky throat, exposed to him in her lapse of restraint. At her stomach trembling with every labored breath. At her mottled shoulders, tensing with every movement.

"You can touch me," she whispered in the still air. "If it helps."

He looked up at her face again, his mouth slack. She was glowing, the rising sun a halo behind her.

Still rocking them both, back and forth, back and forth, like the rolling, endless sea, she picked up his hands in her own.

"Touch me," she said softly. "Don't hurt me…don't hurt me…"

 _Never again_ , he wanted more than anything to say.  _Never again._ But he could only lay beneath her, mute and gluttonous for whatever pleasure she gave him.

She brought his hands to her breasts, laying his palms over their fullness, holding them there and molding his fingers with her own. She shivered, her eyes fluttering closed.

"God, you're so warm." Her voice was a husky whisper, a breath caught in her chest…a secret prayer.

He nearly moaned at the feel of her flesh. He squeezed gently, marveling at the swollen heaviness of her breasts, at the silkiness of her skin. She let out another shaking breath as he touched her, and the edge of one white tooth caught the swell of her bottom lip. She pressed his hands tighter against her.

He  _did_  moan then - a sorry, guttural sound that seemed to force its way out of him, breaking past any sense of shame he felt - as she ground herself on him, against him. As he held her breasts, and her little nipples pebbled in the center of his palms. She let go of his hands and steadied herself on his tense thighs, rolling her hips at a delirious, steady pace.

The meeting of their bodies, wet and soft and measured, reverberated around the quiet villa. Amber sunlight fell across the bed, over her chest and her ribs and her belly; she was painted with the palest gold of the morning. His fingertips trailed over her tight little nipples, drawn out by his accidental touch; he saw her flinch under the feather-light caress, her stomach clenching and her breasts quivering. She arched up towards his hands then, gasping quietly: an  _invitation_. He obliged, teasing the turgid pink tips of her breasts between the pads of his forefinger and thumb. He was slow and gentle, the wicked part of him thinking so many steps ahead, relishing in all the ways he might use her pleasure against her, against her dull brother even… while another part of him… the new and unnervingly human part, wanted to see her writhe in pleasure without any ulterior motive. She moved in time to the circles he tickled around her nipples. Her eyes still squeezed shut, she sighed and trembled as if… as if they were old lovers, falling back into bed after years apart.

He realized then that the act had, somewhere along the line, become consensual.

Claire Redfield - one of his most formidable enemies, one of the  _deepest_ thorns in his side - was impaled on his cock, of her own accord… her fierce features contorted in what could only be ecstasy.

He grunted through his tightly clenched teeth. His stomach seized and felt the tingling of an orgasm building just beneath his testicles.

"You're close," she breathed, and leaned over him.

He was mesmerized - he couldn't help himself - his gaze following her breasts, swaying so near his face. He panted, trying to hold on, to hold out, but his body was wracked with each labored breath. He gently pulled on her nipples, wanting desperately to feel them in his mouth. He didn't dare, though…he  _couldn't_. His eyelids fluttered shut and his brow furrowed in pleasure, or pain, or disbelief.

_How had he ended up here? How?_

She grabbed the edge of the headboard and rode him hard. Every thrust of her hips thumped the bed frame against the wall. "Oh god…come," she growled. "Come inside me." The mattress shifted under them, sliding on the box springs, the bed squeaking in protest.

His cock throbbed. The exhausted muscles in his lower belly trembled with exertion. His toes curled under the blanket.

"I want you to come," she commanded again.

He jerked inside of her.  _So close. So close now._  He took a deep, gasping breath and held it, the cords of muscle and latticework of veins straining in his neck. He tossed his head back and forth on the pillow, damp with his own sweat, and he fought, roaring in his helplessness. The sound of his agony echoed in the villa.

"Don't fight it…don't fight me," she begged, still thrusting. "Please come…please."

And then…he felt her cool fingers, her palm, soft and tender against the side of his reddened face.

He whimpered - a pitiful noise in the back of his throat, one he couldn't contain - and came in five nearly-painful streams against her cervix.

* * *

_**March 20, 2009** _

She woke up disoriented. Her head pounded. The sheets were damp, twisted around her legs. It was still late, and dim yellow light from the streetlamp filtered through the bedroom blinds.

"Neil?" she croaked into the dark. Her voice was thin and reedy. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt like cotton.

She reached over, patting the sheets beside her. The bed was empty. Muffled noise filtered down the hallway. The refrigerator door opening and closing. The sound of water rushing from the kitchen faucet. Footsteps on squeaking floorboards. Muffled conversation from the television.

She ran a palm across her face, kicking her legs free from the sheets. She sat up, and the room swam around her, tilting to an odd angle. Her temples throbbed.

She didn't think she'd had that much to drink. She'd wanted to. She'd wanted to tip the whole goddamn bottle back - single malt scotch, some fancy shit from when she'd gotten her promotion. She'd been saving it for something special.

There wasn't a whole lot of  _special_ to look forward to now.

There'd been broadcasts from Turkey that morning, frantically detailing the first signs of an outbreak in Ankara. There were rumors of cases erupting in Pakistan, India, China. Efforts to contain the virus doubled as it spread.

And spread.

And spread.

 _C-virus._  They called it the C-virus and some crazy, crooked part of her wanted to laugh at that. It felt like they'd made it just for her. Half Birkin, half Alexia. Half Raccoon, half Rockfort. Half crawling through sewers with blood on her face, half Steve dying with her name on his lips...

She'd pulled out her phone last night, wriggling free from the dead weight of Neil's arm, and she'd sent a bleary-eyed text before she'd passed out. One word to Leon.

_News?_

She fumbled with the phone now, squinting down at his response.

_I'll call._

That was it.

It meant no good news. It meant he was in over his head. It meant she'd hear from him in a week, if she was lucky.

She pushed herself out of the bed, letting the sheet fall to the floor, and she padded out towards the living room. Neil sat on the couch - shirtless, unshowered - hunched forward with his eyes locked on the television. He held a cigarette in his left hand.

"I told you not to do that shit in here," she muttered, crossing over to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator herself, frowning at the choices. Some withered produce. Some strawberry yogurt. A takeout box of old orange chicken.

She grabbed one of the cartons of yogurt, twisting it around, searching for an expiration date.

"I think your landlord's got bigger stuff to worry about," Neil said, leaning back. He flipped from one channel to the next - reporters in Athens, correspondents in Kiev, experts from the CDC sharing tips to avoid contamination.

_"Stay indoors unless absolutely necessary. Familiarize yourself with your local community's preparedness plan. Report any abnormalities to-"_

The yogurt expired two days ago. She peeled the foil lid back, sniffing delicately, and shrugged to herself. She fished through the drawer for a spoon. "Anything on the BSSA?" she asked, trying to keep her voice even. She bumped the drawer closed with her hip.

"Not the part you wanna know about." He muted the television, and tilted his head back against the couch, taking a long drag of the cigarette. A coil of smoke slipped from between his lips, curling into the air.

She nodded to herself, dipping the spoon into the yogurt. "I was thinking it might not be the worst idea to run by HQ in the morning." She popped the spoonful into her mouth, mumbling around it. "There might be something in that last report from Kijuju-"

"There's not," he muttered.

"Yeah, but the mortality count didn't include-"

"It covered everything."

"They might not have known whether-"

"Stop it." His voice was weary, drained. He sat the remote down gently, lining it up with the arm of the couch. He raised the cigarette to his lips again. "Stop doing this shit to yourself. We've talked about this."

Instead of answering, she stabbed a gelatinous strawberry with the end of the spoon, severing it in half.

She heard him sigh. The leather couch squeaked as he pushed himself up, crossing the room towards her. He stopped before her, looking at her face. Looking down at the yogurt carton. Looking away towards the sink, and tossing the butt of his cigarette into it. Stretching for time. Stretching for words.

Always fucking stretching.

"I can't imagine what you're going through," he finally said. The same canned, empty thing he'd said a thousand times. "This is stressful enough for the rest of the world, but Chris was right in the middle…"

"He's alive." Her voice cut over his. She scooped up half of the skewered strawberry, glaring down at it. "I know he is. And there's a fucking trail somewhere. There's...there's some kind of last correspondence, something." She shifted her glare up to him, tightening her grip. The plastic crinkled beneath her fingers.

He sighed again -  _always fucking sighing -_  reaching up to run a hand through his hair. "Claire, you've got access to everything I've got access to. And I swear, if there's anything you need to know, I'll tell you the second-"

"Don't feed me that bullshit!" She slammed the carton down behind her. Yogurt splattered across the counter. "I've been working with you for five goddamn years. You think I'm not smart enough to know when something's going on? When shit's bigger than you're letting on? What about that stuff from the UN? You've had those reports on your desk for two fucking  _weeks,_ and you haven't even looked at them."

"Hey. Hey now," he started, in his gentle voice. His careful voice. His kid-glove, defusing-a-bomb voice. "We shouldn't...let's not get into this right now, okay?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry. It's a  _bad fucking time_ for you right now, isn't it?" She moved to shoulder past him, but he stepped to the side, blocking her. She exhaled heavily, bristling, and tilted her chin up towards him. When she spoke, her words wavered, pressed through tightly-clenched teeth. "Something...isn't right, Neil. Something isn't fucking  _right._  He's out there. He knows something. He knows why this is happening."

"Sure. I know." He reached out, pulling her into his arms. She stiffened against his torso. He smelled like cigarette ash. "I'm sorry. I know. I'll go check the reports tomorrow, okay? Maybe there's...some kind of answer. I don't know." He tripped over the words. He ran his fingers through the tangled ends of her hair. He sounded desperate, fumbling through another attempt to comfort her. "I'll look in the morning. Let's just...go back to bed, okay? Let's just do that."

 _Let's just do that_ while the world unraveled around them. Thread after thread snapping. It wouldn't hold.

They wouldn't hold. The two of them. Him and her.

Him and her.

Her stomach lurched over the words. The way they didn't fit. The way his skin stuck to her skin, and left her feeling like she needed a shower.

But she nodded against his chest. She let him lead her back to the bed, and she crawled in beside him, and she kissed him until the burnt ash taste left his mouth, and she arched beneath him like she could feel his cock in her when he thrust between her thighs.

He came.

She didn't.

He slept.

She didn't.

He woke up in the morning. Splashed some water on his face. Grabbed a wrinkled button-down shirt off the floor. Barely looked at her as she clutched the sheets to her bare chest, lying in bed, watching him dress. Told her not to worry as he rushed out the door. Said he'd look over the UN reports. Said he'd come back in two hours, maybe less.

He didn't.

* * *

_**July 3, 2009** _

Claire sat back on her heels; Wesker had  _finally_ gone over the edge, still buried deep inside her. She stared up at the canopy and counted each throb of his cock.

_One. Two._

_Three._

_Four._

A pause, but his body was still drawn as tight as a bow, unfinished.

_Come on._

_Comeoncomeoncomeon._

She exhaled through her nose, her lips pursing.

 _Five._  A final jet of come, not as strong as the rest. He sighed, shaking beneath her in his release.

It was different, somehow, than it was with other men. She could... _feel_  his semen more than she remembered with others. His was warmer, like the rest of him. She felt it spreading around his length inside of her.

It was almost pleasant.

It was a terrible thought.

And she  _hated_ it.

Sex with him hadn't been what she'd expected. Not at all. No choking, or pain, or spitting or debasement or humiliation. No control. He wasn't even rough. Had it been anyone else…had it been Leon, even Neil...she might have let herself enjoy it.

She watched a bead of sweat catch the morning sun and trickle down his collarbone, through thick blond curls at the base of his throat, peeking out from his t-shirt.

 _She hadn't expected him to have body hair,_ she thought, almost idly.

She shook her head, clearing it. Why had she expected anything? What did she care if he shaved or waxed or…whatever he did?

She didn't.

She  _didn't._

"Hey," she said firmly, trying to sound more like herself.

His eyes, once so bright and cruel and observant, cracked open lazily. His gaze was strangely hazy and unfocused; his pupils contracted to thin slits in the morning light. From under his thick eyelashes, he looked at her -  _all_ of her.

She licked her lips and yanked the sheets up around herself. He watched, his expression detached and dreamy; it was doubtful that anything was registering in his post-coital mind at all. She hated that look. She hated him. She hated  _this_. The way the moment lingered, hanging in the air between them. "What do I…should I lay on my back now, or what? Before this shit all drips out of me?" Her words were a sharp bark, chasing the gauzy softness away.

He blinked quickly, shaken by her voice. He cleared his throat. "Yes. On your back, your pelvis tilted up."

She pushed herself off of him. His softening cock slipped from her, leaving her thighs wet with his come, and to her dismay, her own arousal. She grimaced, letting out a disgusted noise. He glanced at her as he sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. His back to her, he rubbed his face. She laid down and arranged the sheet over herself, covering every inch of skin she could.

Without looking, he handed one of his dozen pillows to her. She glared at his hunched shoulders and shoved the pillow under her hips.

"Are you…" His hand moved in circles as he seemed to search his orgasm-addled vocabulary for a word. "Decent?" he asked finally.

She folded her arm over the sheet across her chest. "Yeah," she replied, clipped.

He turned to her then, looking down.

"What?" she snapped.

"Did you…" She heard the reluctance in voice. She had never heard him hesitate before. Not that they had any measurable amount of non-violent communication over the years, but he didn't seem like the kind to search for words.

"Did I  _what_?"

He kept his eyes lowered. "Did you achieve-"

"Are you fucking serious?" She glared at him, drawing back as far as she could. "You wanna know if I came? With  _you?"_

He stared at her for a moment, holding her gaze, before realization sunk in. His eyes narrowed into that familiar red-gold scowl.

"Of course. My deepest apologies, Ms. Redfield," he snarled. "Your theatrics were so very convincing." He tugged roughly at the zipper of his shorts. "I suppose you willed your nipples to hardness, hmm? And your cyprine emissions - that too was faked, correct?" He buttoned his fly, his every movement sharp, furious.

"My  _what?"_ She held the sheet tighter to her chest, feeling her heart pound, her body tremble in building rage.

"Let me rephrase that so you can keep up," he drawled. His voice was darker, his words more pointed. "I forget that below-average intelligence tends to be a familial trait." He knelt by the side of the bed until he was eye-level with her. "You were  _wet._ Dripping. Drenched. Sloppy, even."

She felt her upper lip curl. Her tongue touched the back of her teeth.

Before she could think of a retort, he stood, slipping on one tennis shoe, and then the other. "No amount of acting, Ms. Redfield, could produce that."

He turned to leave.

"You're right," she said.

The sound of her voice stopped him. He waited.

"I was  _dripping,_ yeah. Thinking about Leon." She was silent for a beat, imagining Wesker absorbing the idea. Turning it over and over. Examining it for credibility _._ Thoughtful, she ran her fingers over a complex stitch in the beautiful bed linens. She should have left it there - the comment was cutting enough on its own. But he'd called her out,  _he'd_  started it, and she had never been the type to choke down last words. "He's bigger."

Wesker's shoulders twitched, tensing and relaxing. He turned to face her. "You're a poor liar, Claire. Truly."

They stared at each other down across the room.

He clasped his hands behind his back. "While in cryostasis, I witnessed Agent Kennedy in all his various states of arousal, and I have to say…I was quite underwhelmed."

Her fingers curled in the sheet. Her jaw clenched.

He took a deep breath and regarded her impassively.

"I imagine that neither of us wishes to repeat this... _experience._ So just lie still for twenty minutes. And then kindly get the fuck out of my bed," he said, smiling.

* * *

The door closed behind him.

Softly.

Gently.

She wished he had slammed it.

She wished the wood had splintered, and the glass had shattered, and the noise had echoed all around the island. She wished that he had left her with something to cling to - some mark of rage, of violation. Some reason for taste of bile on the back of her tongue.

Instead, quiet waves lapped at the pilings beneath the villa.

She turned her head and looked out at the water. It shimmered and glittered invitingly, cerulean and still. It stretched on forever around the coast of their island, and then off to the edge of the horizon. It stretched as far as the eye could see.

She laid her hands on her belly.

_Please take, whatever you are._

_Please don't._

_Please._

She could still feel  _herself_  on him. The unnatural warmth of his skin.

He had waited to put his hands on her. He had waited until she had picked up his hands in her own, until she murmured  _touch me_ in a voice she hardly recognized. And when he did touch her, it was carefully, cautiously, as if she was made of glass.

_No one…no one had ever..._

She sobbed, the sound startling her, strangling her. Her hand flew to her mouth, covering it tightly, trying to stifle the weakness in her, to keep it down - but the pain seeped through her fingers. It leaked from her eyes, and slipped down her cheeks. She wiped furiously at her face.

_Stop._

_Don't._

"Stop!" she cried aloud, and her voice echoed around the empty villa.

For a moment...for one disgusting second...she wished he had beaten her. Raped her. Left her lying in a puddle of come and blood. That... _that_  would be familiar. Agonizing, unbearable, but familiar. A world she could make sense of, where Albert Wesker took what he wanted, leaving a trail of ruin behind him.

But he hadn't beaten her. He hadn't raped her.

She wasn't sure he had  _taken_ anything at all.

She bit down on her fist, closing her eyes as tightly as she could. She swallowed the noises that clawed at her throat.

Nothing was familiar now. A month ago, Claire Redfield had woken up in a world she didn't -  _couldn't_  - recognize.


	3. Don't Look

 

* * *

  _"Th_ _e path to paradise begins in Hell."_

_-Dante Alighieri_

* * *

_**Twenty Minutes After the Incident** _

7:58.

7:59.

8:00.

8:01.

The evidence of her weakness had dried on her face some time ago. She had learned to give in to it from her mother, when she was young.

 _Get it out and then leave it all behind, Claire. That's the only way_ , she'd said.

So she did. She'd let herself cry when she broke her arm. When her dog ran away. When Chris left for the Air Force Academy. She'd let herself cry fiercely - alone - when her parents had died.

She let herself cry while she lay in an enormous, beautiful bed, with the sparkling Pacific Ocean outside the window, and a plush pillow beneath her hips, and Albert Wesker's come between her legs because she was afraid that if she got up to go to the bathroom, their plot would fail.

And she would have to do whatever  _that_ was again. And again.

There would be many more tears if she didn't succeed on this first try.

She wiped away her blurry vision and turned her head to the alarm clock on his side table.

8:04.

Twenty minutes had come and gone in the stifling heat of his villa.

She pushed herself to sitting. She didn't feel anything sliding out of her, puddling on the bed. She glanced back to where she had lain on the pillow. No milky spots, no blood. Nothing.

All of  _him_ must have stayed inside of her. It surprised her, for a moment, that he hadn't produced more semen than a normal man. That he'd reacted like normal man. He'd felt like a normal man. If she was honest with herself, the entire... _act_...had surprised her.

Slowly, she reached down, picked up her discarded shorts, her underwear crumpled a foot away. She stood and her legs didn't buckle - she felt steady and relieved; she'd half-expected to melt into the floor, to stumble and fall, to vomit, to break down… but she didn't. She planted her bare feet solidly on the gleaming hardwood… and she stood up from his bed.

_One at a time._

She stepped into the shorts, the panties bunched up in her fist. Right leg. Left leg. The denim slid up over her sticky thighs, up over her hip bones. With shaking fingers, she threaded the button and zipped the fly. She ran her hands over the fabric, smoothing it, feeling the pockets that hung out from the frayed hems. She jammed her underwear into one of them.

She swallowed, light-headed.

 _What's next, little girl? Think hard,_ her mother's voice echoed in her head.

Bra. Tank top.

The bed was a mess. She dug haphazardly through the sheets, foggy-headed, barely focused, forgetting what she was looking for. Her mind moved at a molasses pace. She felt a tingling in her nose, behind her eyes. She fought the sensation.

_Don't cry anymore. It won't do any good._

She found the sports bra first. She clipped the front together before pulling it over her head and yanking it beneath her breasts. The middle of her cleavage felt cool, a  _v_ of perspiration darkening the spandex. She stopped, wavering where she stood.

_It's done, Claire. You're strong. You'll forget this ever happened._

The tank top was next. She grabbed it off the arm of the couch, tugged it on, felt the stiff wrinkles from dried sweat the night before.

_Strip the bed, babydoll. You've still got your manners, and it's what you would want._

Lethargic, Claire popped open the press-buttons at the bottom of Wesker's duvet. She pulled the comforter out and folded it over the back of a chair in the corner of his bedroom. She worked on the mountain of pillows then, and finally on the sheets, gathering up the dirty linens so that they were piled neatly in the middle of his bed.

She looked around the room one last time. Anything she left behind would be gone forever. She wouldn't be coming back for it. No matter what.

The sound of Shadow meowing startled her. She whipped around to face her  _former_ pet. He kneaded the couch cushion and rolled onto his back, his body arching and writhing at strange angles, begging to be scratched. Expecting affection. Demanding attention.

She leaned over him and looked him directly in his self-satisfied green-gold eyes.

"Burn in Hell, you fucking traitor," she whispered coldly.

He purred louder.

She shook her head in disgust and left.

* * *

After a quick and scalding shower in her villa, Claire headed down to the site the group was clearing that day.

She jogged down the path they all took, through a thicket of vines and strange tropical trees she didn't recognize. It was cooler and darker there, beneath the foliage canopy. The air was humid in the forest. She could feel droplets forming on her skin.

It was nothing like Washington D.C. here. It was nothing like any place she had visited. Even her memories of the time she'd spent in swampy, muggy Florida, staying at her aunt's house after her parents died, fell short. Everything was so  _foreign_  that her head ached with it - the cloying and honeyed scent of foreign flowers, the saccharine and savory taste of foreign fruits, the rhythms and cycles of a foreign landscape.

She slowed her pace when she approached the clearing. The sky opened up above her, the trees parting enough that yellow sunlight streamed down and cast gold over the group's work. Everyone was already busy, bent double in the tall grass, tossing branches and palm fronds and stones into a pile near the edge of the treeline. Rebecca was the first to look up and acknowledge her.

"Hey," she said, a little breathless, pushing her mousy-brown bangs out of her eyes.

Claire nodded in greeting, bending over beside her. "What are we doing?"

"Moving all this stuff out of the way. He thinks this'll be a decent place for growing in the fall." Rebecca wiped her face with the back of her gloved hand. A smear of dirt streaked across her forehead.

"Miss  _Redfield_."

Claire cringed. His baritone voice called to her from across the clearing. Rebecca's entire body went rigid and she looked at Claire like a deer in blinding headlights - with a mix of pity and terror.

For a moment, Claire held her breath…and then she stood and turned to him.

Wesker, shirtless and glistening in the sun, threw down a bushel of great browned leaves and branches. He stared at her. She could see his vicious red eyes, flashing with rage, glowing like flames beneath his dark sunglasses.

Only an hour before…he had gazed at her with those same eyes, dazed and contented and… _gentle._  She had forgotten, somehow, what he truly was: something inhuman, something man-made. The most dangerous B.O.W. ever created had been inside of her, that very morning, taking its pleasure from her…imagining she took pleasure from  _it_. Her blood froze in her veins.

"I wasn't aware this was a voluntary endeavor," he shouted across the grass. His voice boomed, echoing in the trees. He glanced around at her friends, her family. "Everyone but you seems to understand the gravity of this situation, don't they?"

"I wasn't  _feeling well_ ," she shot back, her teeth ground so tightly together they hurt.

Wesker glowered. "None of us are feeling well, Miss Redfield."

She looked at him, incredulous. This had been  _his_ plan,  _his_  idea. It was  _his_ fault she was late to begin with.

"Just do your goddamn job," he finally sneered, mirroring what she'd said to him in his bed.

Her jaw tightened, but she put on the gloves Rebecca handed her, and began picking up debris like everyone else. And as sweat dripped down her nose and burned her eyes, she promised herself she would never be tricked by clever monsters again.

* * *

_**March 28, 2009** _

The streets were eerily silent.

She walked. Her footsteps echoed on the pavement. Storefront lights flickered on and off, buzzing and crackling as the last of the generators failed. In the distance, the smell of smoke rose on the wind.

Smoke and ash and burning. The scent of melted rubber and scorched wood.

She hadn't felt this way in years. The sharp needling of adrenaline in her veins. Tensing, trembling muscles. Ears and eyes straining for any sign of movement in the empty world, in the hollowed-out shells of buildings that lined the street.

She hadn't been  _this girl_  in years. High ponytail. Gun at her hip, knife in her boot. Turning tight corners and casting quick glances over her shoulder as she walked. But it all came rushing back, as easily as breathing. As walking. One foot before the other, trying not to jump at wavering shadows and creaking hinges.

She clutched the strap of her backpack, darting across the abandoned road. Dead traffic lights swung overhead.

Nothing moved.

When the virus struck - a military-grade missile, source unknown - it took less than a week to travel up the coast of Central America, carving a path through the Southwest, out towards the Pacific, out towards the Eastern Seaboard. Less than a week to reach D.C.

Neil had left -  _disappeared,_  she corrected herself,  _disappeared_  - and she had been alone for days, watching the destruction play out from her apartment.

It wasn't the destruction she'd expected.

In his final transmission, Chris had talked about what he was up against in Kijuju. A virus he called Uroboros. A mass of writhing tentacles, black and slick, that seemingly devoured everything it touched.

This...this was something else entirely. Insect parts. A virus with a chrysalis nothing could crack. People changing, mutating, new eyes and legs and wings and shells. New minds.  _Minds_ that could think, react, respond. Quick and sharp. Aware.

_C-virus. C-virus. From T to G to C. The same thing again, again, again, again, worse each time, something new, but the same toxic, twisted, gnarled roots, spreading and spreading..._

She mentally shook herself, quickening her pace, and let the thoughts blur behind her. She could see the gas station now. She squinted towards the building. The door looked intact. The windows looked unbroken. The street looked empty.

_Good._

She repeated the plan to herself. She'd been silently reciting it over and over as she walked, words looping in time with her footfalls.  _Get in. Quick check around the perimeter. Staples - first aid, water, dried fruit, jerky - whatever she could fit in her backpack. Check behind the counter for ammo. Five minutes tops. Then back out, grab the cat, head north towards 495, get past it before the sun-_

Something shattered in the dark, and echoed all around her.

A gunshot.

It came from behind her. The blast sounded heavy as a shotgun, and she froze immediately, every muscle in her body seizing tight.

The blast was followed by a shout. The words were garbled and unintelligible, but it was no piercing, fearful scream. And it was distinctly human.

She quickened her pace towards the building. She'd have to be quick. She'd have to be fucking  _fast._ If there were others out scavenging, prowling one of the last intact blocks of the city...she didn't want to be caught in the middle of it.

The main door would be sealed tight. Chained up, or barricaded from the inside. The front windows were reinforced with iron bars. The bathrooms, though...she'd been in there a few times. Narrow windows with plain fogged glass.

She wasn't nearly as limber now, compared to when she was nineteen, but she could try to wrench one open and wriggle her way through. Or she could shatter the glass, and hope whoever she met inside was feeling a little generous.

And more than a little uninfected.

She rounded the corner of the building, and was met with another empty stretch of road. The moon glinted off street signs, green and silver-white. The shouting in the distance had fallen silent.

_Get in. Get out. Fucking. Fast._

* * *

_**Two Weeks From the Incident** _

Days passed. Quick and slow. Stuttering and sluggish.

When she first arrived on the island - when she woke up, and found herself stranded on the bright white sand, and the world around her smelled like salt and heat and sun - she thought time would never feel normal again. She thought the days and nights would carve themselves into her skin, one after the other. Mark after mark. Red sunrises and purple sunsets she could wear like bruises.

 _That's day fifteen,_ she would say, examining them in the mirror.  _That's day twenty-two._

But day fifteen didn't feel so different from day twenty-two. And day twenty-two didn't feel so different from day thirty-five. They bled together, tangled up with one another.  _Salt and heat and sun._

Two weeks came and went - day now, day something, day clear morning and circling seagulls and breaking surf - and she would hardly have known it.

Until she woke up to find a streak of dark red blood staining the crotch of her panties.

She stared down at them, letting out a deep, trembling breath. She leaned against the back of the toilet, arms wrapped around her midsection.

She felt…relieved.

Not relieved.

Not  _not_ relieved.

She felt something. Nothing. A vague, grey space somewhere in the middle.

_It might have worked. It probably didn't. But it might have. But it definitely didn't._

_They would have to try again._

The thought didn't make her sick. It made her stomach flip, made her mouth dry, made her breath hitch...but it didn't make her feel like vomiting.

It didn't make her feel like screaming. Not anymore.

Now it was only nerves. Just nerves.

_Everything was fine._

_Things weren't so different._

This morning, she ran the same comb through the same locks of copper hair  _they'd stuck to her throat and brushed his face and she'd seen him staring_ and she put on the same black tank top and the same pair of jean shorts  _after twenty awful minutes she'd crawled from the bed and fumbled with her clothes and didn't realize her top was inside-out until she made it back to her villa_. She walked down the same sun-bleached wooden pier  _she'd darted by quiet cabins with drawn curtains and she'd kept her head down and chewed her lip_ and climbed the same stone stairs to the veranda to join the others for breakfast  _and if someone had stopped her, if someone had told her she looked pale, sick, shaken, asked what was wrong, she would have cracked into a thousand pieces._

_Because nothing had been wrong._

She took a seat beside Sherry. She reached for a pitcher of blush-colored juice. Papaya, maybe. Probably.

 _They would have to try again._ The thought grated at her. The memories scratched her. She waited for them to sink in. For the panic to hit, and her throat to close, and her hands to go numb.

The pitcher didn't shake in her hands. The juice didn't slosh over the rim of her glass, spilling to the table.

_They would have to try again._

"You want some…ham, or something?" Sherry asked, passing her a platter. Claire narrowed her eyes at the plate, more than a little distrustful.

"I was digging around in the meat locker and found it way in the back," Sherry said. "I smelled it, after it was cooked. Rebecca gave her professional medical opinion - she says it's fine." She shrugged.

Conversation drifted down from both ends of the table. The morning breeze rustled the palm fronds and the short, gnarled shrubs of sea grapes. Chris slid into the chair across from her, groaning as he settled back against the wood.

_They would have to try again._

"You okay?" Sherry asked, passing the plate to him. He frowned and declined the mystery meat, looking down the table at the rest of the spread.

"Yeah. Had to climb around and check a couple of the...cells...whatever you call them…" He pulled a platter of fruit towards him.

"PV cells," Sherry offered, biting into a salad cracker and brushing the crumbs off her lap.

_She would have him inside her again. She had done it once. She'd spent two weeks trying not to think, two weeks hiding, pushing it to the farthest corners of her mind. And it would happen again._

"Yeah. Those. We thought a couple of the ones on the edge might be cracking." He jerked his head towards a jar of strawberry jam. "Pass me that?"

Sherry leaned across Claire, grabbing the jar. "Are they good?"

_She'd have to tell him. She didn't know how. They'd been avoiding each other for two weeks now. They'd been traveling in wide orbits, barely exchanging glances, much less words. She'd have to tell him it didn't work._

"Look fine for now." He spooned a sticky glob of bright red jam out, scraping it onto his own cracker. "Hope they stay that way."

_Hell, maybe it was a sign. Maybe it wouldn't work out. Maybe he was infertile. Maybe he'd read the test wrong, and she was. Maybe they wouldn't have to try again. Maybe she could forget all of this. And he'd move on to someone else._

She stared into the glass, watching the juice ripple as Sherry bumped the table. Something deep in her stomach twisted at the thought.

_He'd move on to someone else._

"Me too," Sherry answered, nodding emphatically at Chris. "I don't want to be this person, but if we lose electricity, I swear…"

 _He'd move on to someone else…when she'd taken her top off for him. She'd taken her bra off for him. She'd taken it off and he'd seen her body, he'd touched her body, and her body had responded. It had moved for him. It had moved with him. He'd move on to someone else but he'd already felt_ her  _muscles tensing and shuddering and she'd felt her nerves shivering and that was normal, she couldn't help it, it was just biology, it was normal, it was-_

"Morning," Chris muttered under his breath. She glanced up to see Wesker brushing behind his chair.

Two weeks had passed, and it felt like half a breath, and it felt like time had frozen all around them.

She'd seen him. Of course she'd seen him. He was everywhere, doing everything. He was clearing brush from the edge of the jungle. He was hauling nets full of fish in from the bay. He was digging trenches for rainwater runoff, and he was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and the muscles in his back rippled with every move…

 _Don't look,_ she'd tell herself, hurrying past. She didn't need to look. She didn't  _want_ to look. She'd seen more than enough of him already.

But she always looked.

And he always caught her staring.

It happened that morning. Every morning. Fourteen mornings in a row. He passed behind Chris, heading to the far end of the table, and he was just a flicker of movement and her mind said  _don't look_ and her eyes were on him almost instantly, watching as he slipped into his chair, pulling a bowl of sliced melon towards him.

He grabbed a spoon, and he froze - like a thing in the wild, sensing danger - and tilted his head towards her.

His sunglasses hid his gaze, but she knew it was leveled on her. Piercing. Blistering.

Almost indignant.

It hit her all at once, a quick jab to the stomach:  _he could smell her._

He could smell her bleeding.

 _Look away,_ she told herself.

But she didn't.

And neither did he.

"...we could bring it up at the meeting today. You guys in?" She heard Chris slurping aggressively on the skin of some fruit she didn't recognize.

"Definitely," Sherry answered. Bright and chirpy. "Claire?"

 _Look. Away._ And she tore her eyes away from him - his stern figure, his disapproving frown, his forearm resting on the table, his thumb tapping against the handle of his spoon as he stared.

Glared. He was glaring at her. Definitely glaring.

_Jesus Christ. Stop looking at him._

She grabbed the glass of juice, chugging it as quickly as she could.

"Uh...Claire?"

"Mhm," she answered, in what she hoped was a noncommittal way, and her voice echoed in the glass. The juice was sickly sweet. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

Fourteen days ago, he'd fucked her. She'd fucked him. They'd fucked each other. She didn't know. Except she  _did_  know, because she'd been on top of him, pressing him down into the mattress, desperate to get it over with. And now she was sitting here, shoving a too-big bite of something,  _anything_ , into her face so she didn't have to talk. Because Chris might ask her a question about coconuts, or fence posts, or harvesting oysters,  _whatever the fuck_  they talked about now, and all she could think about was the blood between her legs. How Wesker was smelling it, Wesker was smelling  _her_ , and thinking about her, and how in two more weeks, they'd be back staring at the bed, and he'd be doing more than thinking...

"Whoa!" A clatter erupted from the far end of the table, followed by Moira's voice. "Dude, what the fu…" She stopped, swallowing the end of her sentence.

Claire turned. The bowl of melon was in pieces on the ground. Fruit spilled across the stones, pale green and bright yellow.

Wesker looked down at it. His lips tightened into a near-frown.

"My apologies," he muttered. And he pushed away from the table. In a few strides he was far from the group, heading around a corner towards the villas.

Josh cleared his throat. Rebecca hopped out of her chair, muttering about cleaning up. Moira flicked a stray melon seed from her shoulder.

Chris raised an eyebrow, turning to watch Wesker leave. He shook his head.

Claire focused on a point just above Chris's shoulder. She curled her fingers around the edge of the table.

 _Don't look,_ she told herself, over and over.  _Don't look._

* * *

_**March 28, 2009** _

She landed on the bathroom tile, knees buckling from the impact. She spit a piece of hair out of her mouth. She brushed splintered wood from her palms.

The window had been a tight squeeze, but the right choice. The place was silent, and dark, and had a distinctly unpleasant smell - stale water, mildew, cleaning chemicals. The window creaked back into place behind her, shutting out the sparse light from the outside world.

She held her breath as she crossed the room, and placed both palms on the door, straining to hear.

Nothing seemed to be moving on the other side. There was always a chance someone had decided to camp out in here...and anyone who'd made it this long would know to be silent, and on their guard.

But they'd also know to board the windows up. Or barricade the doors. She gave it a slight push, and it opened easily. Clean and quiet.

The inside of the store was awash in moonlight. It slanted across the shelves, illuminating untouched displays - snack cakes and bags of chips, gum and bandages and travel packs of Tylenol. Nothing seemed to be disturbed.

She slung her backpack off one shoulder, opening the main compartment. She'd aim to get enough food to last a week. Water was going to be the biggest issue - bulky, and heavy, but she'd take as much as she could. There would be more abandoned businesses along the way to...wherever.

She started with a shelf to her left. Protein bars. Peanut butter. Oatmeal raisin. Chocolate chip cookie dough - the kind Chris always had on him.

_Had._

She grabbed a handful, shoving them into the bag. They'd be perfect. Light. Efficient.  _He wouldn't ever eat them again._ Not very tasty - they always felt like chalk on her tongue, or coated the roof of her mouth - but they'd keep her going.  _He'd take two with him to the gym each morning before work. There was always a box on top of his refrigerator._

She gritted her teeth, moving down the aisle. Granola bars. A shelf full of granola bars. Honey oat. She could grab some of those.

" _You could try eating something real for breakfast," she'd told him, when she was nineteen, home from college, sprawled out on the ratty couch in his apartment. The springs dug into her spine. "People cook stuff sometimes. Eggs. Whatever."_

" _Don't have time," he'd muttered - almost slurring - as he stumbled to the coffee pot. He'd frowned at the leftover liquid in the bottom. Sniffed it. Poured it in the sink, and shoved the pot back on the unit._

She reached out, bracing herself on one of the shelves. The box of granola bars tumbled to the floor.  _Not now,_ she told herself, fingers curling around the metal grating.  _Not now. You're here. He's not. You keep going. Not now…_

Her thoughts crashed to a halt when she heard something rustle across the store. A switch clicked, and the beam of a flashlight spilled across the tile.

"Who's there?" It was a man's voice, rough and ragged. Weary. The light flickered from the floor to the wall and back again, sweeping the store.

She stayed frozen. Her pulse leapt to her throat.

"Maybe it was something in the trash again," another voice - a woman - whispered from the dark.

"Mom?" A child. Young. Too young for this. The woman shushed them.

_Shit._

_Shit, shit, shit._

She carefully eased her backpack strap onto her shoulder, moving a centimeter at a time. She had to get out. She could get supplies somewhere else - bust in the door of a neighboring apartment, someone who'd already fled the city. Scavenge through the dumpsters. She'd find what she needed. She'd needed to-

She took a step back, onto one of the granola bars. It crunched beneath her boot, echoing like a firecracker in the tiny, silent store.

_Shit._

"Stay here," the man hissed. Nylon fabric rustled. Something rattled in the dark. The beam from the flashlight bobbed up and down, then steadied, resuming its sweep from corner to corner of the gas station.

"Whoever's in here, we're armed!" He was trying to keep his voice even. She could hear the edge of panic in it.

She could step out...hands up, no weapons...but he'd be ready to shoot at the first sign of movement. She could try to run, skidding across the tile, scrambling back out the bathroom window. It would be noisy. Messy. Leave her too open.

She could call out to him - full name, age, job, brother, cat, anything that made her human. Tell him exactly where she was. Exactly why she was there.

It was the only option. That, or risk getting her head blown off in a moment of panic. She took a deep breath, turning towards the aisle the man hand wandered down. He had a family. She wasn't a threat to them. He'd understand. He'd-

Her thoughts were cut short by an eruption of noise from the front of the gas station. Glass shattered, cascading to the floor in a waterfall of sparkling silver-white. The child shrieked, and there was a clamor of noise from the corner as they scrambled away from the danger.

Claire saw the man run from the aisle out of the corner of her eye - a black silhouette racing towards the front of the store. She crouched behind the shelf, down on her hands and knees, hidden out of sight from the windows.

"We got people in here!" someone outside shouted. She heard his boots crunch on the glass as he stepped through the shattered door.

There was a heavy pause. Too heavy. Too long.

Something was wrong.

And then:

"We're just...we're just camped out here." The man's voice wavered as he spoke. There was a desperate, spiking edge to his words. She heard a metallic  _clank_ as he dropped his weapon to the ground. The beam from the flashlight bounced as it hit the floor. "Just staying somewhere safe overnight. You can take whatever you-"

A single gunshot echoed all around the store.

Something heavy hit the floor with a dull, sickening  _thud._

She inhaled sharply, eyes widening. She heard a muffled cry from the corner - the woman had covered the child's mouth. More footsteps. She scrambled towards the middle of the aisle. Her palms were sweaty, sliding against the linoleum as she crawled.

"Grab those two," someone said. Gruff. Abrupt. "Check around for anyone else. Start bagging this shit up."

She clambered away into the next aisle - a corner with scratch-off tickets and a display full of melted ice cream - and fumbled for her gun, leaning back against the shelves.

They'd killed him.

They'd killed him - an unarmed man, while his wife and child watched.

He'd dropped his gun. He'd told them to take whatever they wanted, and they'd shot him without hesitating.

And they were  _humans._

She closed her eyes, listening carefully, trying to track the footsteps. Two men winding their way around the far wall, near the cash register. At least one by the door. One...no, two heading towards the woman, who yelled  _stay back_ into the dark, her words cracking with tears.

Five men. Maybe more. One with a handgun - and there was no way that's all they'd brought.

Her own gun trembled in her hand. She'd faced worse odds before. She'd run through the halls of an Umbrella lab, a hail of bullets behind her. She'd fought through hordes of the infected. She'd stared down William Birkin, Albert Wesker, Alfred and Alexia Ashford...

She'd killed monsters.

 _Monsters._ Creatures with dripping fangs and sharpened claws and rotting flesh, who fought ferociously, who fought mindlessly. Who tore through humans like they were nothing but meat.

Those were easy. Those were twisted, terrible things. Everything inside them was distorted. Unrecognizable.

These were people.

People, thinking and talking and killing other people. While the world disintegrated around them. While they all desperately clung to anything that looked stable.

She didn't kill people.

_She didn't kill people._

The woman screamed. Scuffled. Begged incoherently, words tangled in her weeping.  _No_ and  _please_ and  _don't,_ over and over. The child cried for their mother.

_She had to help. She had to help. She couldn't hurt anyone. They were people. She could talk to them. They would listen. She couldn't hurt them. She had to -_

Another gunshot. The screaming stopped. The crying rose, high and piercing.

"See what's in their bags," a man said. "And shut the kid up."

Five men, six men, seven men, she didn't know how many men. A gas station at the end of the world. Blood on the floor. A child...a child, struggling, shouting, and no monsters in sight, no monsters tearing down the door, no putrid flesh or lolling tongues or yellowed bones showing through gaping wounds. Nothing but men and a child and two dead bodies and her. Her saying  _move move move,_ and her body staying frozen, because they were people, they were all  _people,_ she didn't kill people, she didn't, she couldn't-

A final shot.

It was somehow quieter than the last two. No mad scramble. No agonizing scream.

Just another lifeless body hitting the floor, and men who went on about their business, unzipping bags, rifling through shelves.

Men.

People.

Her throat burned, a wave of bile rising in her stomach.

 _Go. Don't stop. Don't look._ She bit down on her tongue. She tasted blood, sharp and metallic.  _Just run. Don't look. Don't look. Don't look._

She pushed away from the shelf, stumbling towards the bathroom. She heard a shout behind her as she burst through the door.

Outside, she would vomit. She would cry. She would scream and bite her knuckles until the skin bled.

But not yet.

_Don't look. Just run._

* * *

The apartment door slammed shut behind her. She locked the deadbolt. The chain. Pushed dresser back in front of it, boots squeaking and slipping on the floor, vision blurring with tears.

Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

They wouldn't stop. They wouldn't stop, and she couldn't breathe.

She ran her fingers through her hair - greasy, matted with sweat and dirt - and yanked her ponytail loose.

Her backpack fell to the floor -  _too loud, keep quiet, there might be something listening_ \- and she followed it, sliding down the living room wall.

They'd died. Three people. Two parents and a child. They'd died one after another, while she'd stayed silent, while she'd crouched behind a shelf and listened to them screaming.

Monsters hadn't torn them limb from limb.

A person had shot them. Point-blank. Ruthless. A person had watched them die.

Claire Redfield knew how to kill a monster. She knew how pump them full of metal. Drive her knife into their vulnerable places. Stomp through crumbling bones and sagging tissue, all without flinching.

She didn't know how to kill a person.

And she realized...as she choked down sob after terrible sob, digging her nails into the flesh of her palms, telling herself she was weak weak  _weak..._ she wasn't sure she could live in a world where she had to learn.

It struck like an electrical current, sparking through her veins. A sudden, shocking finality.

_She couldn't._

She was a survivor. She was wired to fight. She was all grit, all guts. She had clawed her way through hell once. Twice. Three times.

But hell was everywhere now. And there was nothing...no one...waiting on the other side.

The sobs stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. Tears clung to her eyelashes as she looked around the apartment. A place full of shadows. She felt like she was looking at it through a series of pictures, flipping through a photo album. Somewhere far, far away.

It wasn't the worst one she'd ever lived in. It was a ten minute walk to the tunnels that used to be a metro. A twenty minute ride to the hollow shell of a building she worked in. It had pale grey walls with chipping paint, and crown molding, and fake wood floors. It had one bedroom. A kitchen island. A closet door that squeaked. A wilting philodendron on the balcony, and an ice maker that had never worked, and bright sunny windows, and a handle on the bathroom faucet she'd had to jiggle to keep it from leaking.

 _It'll be okay,_ Neil had said, when news of Kijuju's collapse went public. He'd sat on the couch with her. His thumb had traced circles on her cheek.  _Chris is still out there. He won't go down that easy._

He'd pressed his forehead to hers. He'd woven his fingers through hers.

_We'll be okay. I'm here._

She'd believed him.

And he'd left her.

_Neil had left. Chris had left. Leon Sherry Moira Barry everyone had left her._

_Everyone was gone._

_They weren't coming back._

The world outside was deathly quiet. For a while, it had been a wild roar of noise - curfew sirens, emergency broadcasts, supply drops, desperate phone calls and frantic arguments carrying through the thin apartment walls. A constant pounding in her temples.

Now all she could hear was her own breath rattling in her lungs, as loud as hurricane winds.

She couldn't survive this.

The gun - the one she'd stared down at, the one she had ready with a full clip, the one that sat heavy and useless in her hand while people died screaming - still hung from her hip. She swore she could feel it burning her skin.

She would also swear she hadn't pulled it from its holster. But it was in her hands again. A familiar weight. An easy grip.

_She couldn't survive this._

_Nobody could._

She moved like she was knee-deep in a swamp. Like vines tangled around her arms, around her torso, around her neck. Like the dark, wet earth pulled her down deeper with each struggling movement.

She could barely breathe as she raised it to her temple.

The metal was cool against her skin. Her arm shook.

From the bookshelf across the room, cat-eyes stared her down. Unnervingly large, flashing yellow and green and yellow in the dark.

She wondered - distantly, like the thought came from somewhere outside herself - how long it would be before Shadow ate her corpse.

_It might not work._

_It would._

She inhaled. Her chest tightened. Her lungs burned.

_Someone might come._

_No one was coming._

She exhaled. The breath shook with something that sounded like a sob.

_It would hurt._

_Not for long._

She closed her eyes. She didn't feel a sense of calm. Of easy, peaceful acceptance.

She felt like she was going to die.

_No one was getting out of this alive. Better to end it now. Quick and clean and quiet, not knowing what comes next._

_Now._

Three.

_don't think, don't think, stop thinking, just do it, there's nothing here, there's nothing left, please, anyone, anything, please_

Two.

_someone might come, someone might, the world was dead, dying, everyone was gone, someone might be out there, someone might be looking, someone might, please, please, please_

One...

A knock on the door shattered the silence. Three sharp, echoing raps.

She froze, finger still poised on the trigger.

* * *

_**Four Weeks From the Incident** _

Thunder rumbled over the Pacific, threatening a storm that would never quite make it ashore. A warm, misty rain blanketed the island, obscuring the tall forested hills in the near-distance. The drizzling rain wet Claire's skin like dew, it curled the fine wispy hairs around her upturned face. It was cool enough that she wasn't sweating, but warm enough to be balmy.

It was a beautiful, lazy sort of day.

Rebecca had tried, unsuccessfully, to rally some troops to do something in the kitchen. She promised cookies to her victims; not one of them took the bait. No meaningful work would be done that day, and it was exactly the break they all needed.

Claire passed Chris on her way across the resort. He was sleeping off a hangover in a hammock near the beach, a fishing hat draped over his face. Moira and Sherry walked the receding shore, picking up shells. Claire could hear their banter and laughter.

She looked up to the dark horizon as she walked down the plank path, her laundry basket set on her hip, the constant  _clip-clop_ of her sandals on the sea wood like a steady tattoo. She squinted at the ominous, rolling clouds ahead.

Her life seemed then to hang in a perfect balance. Precariously on the cusp of something enormous… perhaps positive, perhaps not. She couldn't describe it, had no words for it… but something was about to change, one way or another.

She just knew.

* * *

Wesker was the only one in the resort laundromat. Slumped in a chair, his long legs spidered out in front of him, a worn book butterflied over his thigh. He licked his thumb and turned a page, not even bothering to look up when the screen door creaked open.

_Don't, Claire. Do not._

Her heart pounded hard in her chest at the first sight of him. She  _almost_  hesitated on the threshold, but it was too late to turn around, it was too late to keep walking, it was too late for anything else. She steeled herself and stepped over his foot, went straight to the only machine that didn't sound like a giant rock tumbler when it was over-filled.

They were alone in there. The two of them. No one else around. They hadn't been alone since...

_Don't look. Do not… under any circumstances… look at him._

She shoveled her dirty clothes in and spread a generous amount of powdered detergent over the top, her stomach in her throat. She set the machine, maybe,  _hopefully_ , but her hands shook so much she couldn't be sure, and she could barely see straight, and then -

He was directly behind her, so close her nose brushed his chest when she turned.

She very nearly screamed. Her body reacted, all the years of choosing fight over flight paying off in that single instant, and her hands slammed against his chest, pushing as hard as she could.

If he had been human, he would have been sent sailing backwards over the row of dryers in the middle of the laundromat. If he had been human, the air would have been forced from his lungs and he would have been doubled over, gasping like a fish out of water. If he had been human…

But he wasn't. He wasn't human  _at all_. And he didn't budge an inch.

Before she could dodge around him, he'd placed both hands flat on the washing machines, caging her in. She could feel the heat of his forearms on either side of her head.

She was trapped.

Her body trembled. Her thoughts stuttered and then ceased altogether, but she willed her eyes up until her gaze met his.

He took a deep, centering breath. "I want you…to stop  _looking_  at me." He didn't blink. "I want you to stop  _thinking_  about me…I want you out of my personal space, out of my line of sight...out of my way...entirely." He spoke through clenched teeth, his words growing tighter with each sentence. "I can feel your beady little eyes following me.  _Everywhere._ It's violating. It's desperate. It's disgusting. Do you understand? Yes?" He nodded at her slowly, as if she'd miss the point.

As if she was just another idiot.

She was quiet for a moment, staring up at him. And looking into his eyes - his sneer, his  _disgust -_ she bristled.

She felt something rising up in her, rippling, nearly roaring. The same monster that reared its head whenever someone told her she was wrong. Told her to stop. Told her to slow down.

Made her feel  _stupid._

She'd spent an agonizing month dodging, ducking, regretting. Reliving that incident again, and again, and again, wallowing in self-pity. She'd spent a month  _feeling_ disgusting. She'd spent weeks before that watching the world unravel around her, watching society collapse brick by brick, murder by murder.

 _He'd_ caused this. It wasn't his stupid fucking virus, but he'd started it all.

 _He_ was the reason she was here.

The reason any of them were here.

The reason these  _disgusting_ things were happening.

If she had been like any other woman, she would have cried, humiliated and shamed at his words. If she had been like any other woman, she would have dropped to her knees in terror and promised to do everything he'd asked. If she had been any other woman…

But she wasn't any other woman.  _At all_.

She stood up to her full height, her face very close to his. She felt him tense, felt him shift his weight - a micro-submission.

She caught herself before she laughed out loud.

_Look at him. Keep looking. Don't stop._

"I know…" she started, taking a step closer to him.

His arms fell away and he took a step back.

"...that you can smell me," she continued. Another step. "And I'm pretty sure I'm fertile."

_Keep looking. Don't stop._

He bumped up against one of the dryers, stumbled over his own feet.

"And you know…" she smiled, "...that I'm going to have to  _fuck_  you again very soon."

He scowled at her, shaking his head. " _Vile_ ," was all he could manage.

She felt her smile pull tighter, baring her teeth. "And I think you're worried. I think you're afraid I might trick you like I did before."

He scoffed.

For a moment - for a beautiful,  _glorious_ moment, one that she was sure she'd remember forever - she watched him struggle for words.

She waited. He didn't scramble. Didn't stutter. He just stood very still, and the muscle in his jaw clenched, working at something intangible.

Then he hissed: "Keep your fantasies to yourself, Miss Redfield."

Abruptly, he headed for the door, in full retreat.

"You want me to fold your clothes now too?" she called after him, her voice still very bold.

When he was out of sight, she sagged against the washers, the fiery thing inside of her extinguished in an instant. She was left panting, sweating, trembling, and the vibrations of the machines coursed through her like the adrenaline that pumped in her blood. Her hands shook uncontrollably.

She had bested him, in that moment. She'd  _won._

But she knew he wouldn't leave her challenge unanswered for long.


	4. Green Apple

 

* * *

  _"From a little spark may burst a flame."_

_-Dante Alighieri, "Paradiso"_

* * *

  
He hadn't planned on letting himself in. It was not something he had actively  _premeditated_.

But she wasn't in her villa, and the door was unlocked. In fact,  _all_  of their doors were unlocked. He knew, because he'd tried them all, one after the other.

_Idiots._

The front door closed quietly behind him. He took six soundless steps down the little hallway, and then glanced around.

The layout was exactly like his. A full bath near the entrance. A stainless steel kitchenette to the right. An eat-in granite bar. A step down to a lounge space, and a step up to the raised canopy bed, with French doors opening out to the sparkling pool and the rolling blue-grey sea.

Exactly like his. Identical. But a bit more...lived-in, perhaps.

Little bits of clutter were scattered all around. A crumpled plastic wrapper and a ceramic mug with a coffee-stained rim sat on the countertop. Some sandals had been haphazardly kicked off by the door. A tube of sunscreen, covered in smudges and fingerprints, sat on the ornate console table, with a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses next to it.

Her bed hadn't been made that morning. After their... _time together,_ he'd been shocked - suspicious, even - to come back to his villa in the muggy afternoon, and find the linens piled neatly in the middle of his bed. She didn't seem nearly as conscientious about her own quarters. The duvet was crooked, hanging too low on one side. The pillows were in a messy pile. A decorative, tasseled one had fallen to the floor.

He stepped up towards the bed, bending to pick up the pillow. He dusted it off and tossed it back into the pile.

To his left, there was the same warm wooden chest of drawers, lined up beneath the same gold-plated mirror. The top drawer was wedged open, a bit of fabric sticking out.

Her hairbrush sat on top, with three elastic ties scattered around. It was simple, cheap and plastic, with strands of auburn hair stuck in the bristles. He reached out, unthinkingly, and touched the handle, turning it so it was flush with the edge of the dresser. He moved the ties next to it - also tangled with hair - one by one.

He reached for the top drawer, with its intricate brass handles, and gave it a firm tug. The offending article of clothing came loose, slipping back inside.

It was full to the brim with a messy assortment of things. Mostly undergarments, all thrown together into an indiscriminate pile. Unfolded, unsorted.

She was not a  _meticulous_  girl, to say the absolute least.

He sighed, staring down at the chaos. He certainly hadn't let himself inside with the intention of cleaning up after her, but...

He spent a moment shuffling through the drawer, shifting the contents around to prevent any further obstructions. He untangled a few of the articles - mostly simple things, grey and white, soft and well-worn. Nothing... _seductive,_ but with each touch, he felt something rising in his blood.

And then, at the bottom of the drawer, a bra. One that Jill had grabbed during the frantic sweep of the girl's apartment, as she filled the duffel bag with supplies. He pulled it from the drawer, holding it up in the fading light of the room. It was a thoroughly impractical thing - emerald green, sheer, covered in elegant lacework. Heavily padded, undoubtedly meant to lift the chest, accentuate the curve and the swell of her cleavage…

Something she'd worn for other men, before The End. Something they'd hastily pulled off, dropped to the floor without a second thought.

The green would have looked striking against her freckled skin and amber hair.

He set it back in the drawer. Buried it beneath a layer of unassuming cotton and spandex and…

His fingers had curled around the black sports bra before he realized it. The one she'd worn when she'd come to his villa, barely sober enough to stand. The one she'd slept in, sprawled across his couch. The one she'd removed, eyelet by metal eyelet, breasts straining at the fabric, all porcelain skin and welcoming warmth and indescribable softness.

The one she'd worn for him.

He dropped it, slamming the drawer closed, narrowly missing his fingers as he pulled his hand away. He couldn't shake that vision.  _The_ vision. Her, above him in the white-gold morning light, straddling him, sinking onto him, bright blue eyes fluttering closed as she took his hands, urging him to touch her…

His fingers clenched to a fist.

His mouth felt dry.

His lungs, his chest, his  _groin_ all felt far too tight.

He turned away from the intricate dresser and the beautiful bed. He wandered in a vague circle around the villa. The sun was finally sinking below the horizon, spilling through the windows, painting the room with glowing red rays. Though the buildings were positioned the same, and the sun cast its predictable light across the same basic furniture, the same wooden floors...this place felt warmer, somehow, than his own villa.

Unwashed dishes in the sink. A collection of pale seashells and cracked sand dollars on the breakfast counter. A towel hanging on the edge of the laundry hamper, just inside the bathroom door.

He walked towards it, gathering up the towel and pushing it into the bin. It was still damp from her morning shower, and lightly scented. A crisp, clean smell - not particularly cloying, nothing floral or sugary.

He crossed the room to the shower - all glass with a waterfall head. It was still open. There were three little bottles on the shelf, within arm's reach of the door.

He picked one up.  _Desert Essence Green Apple and Ginger Shampoos._ Nearly half-empty. He set it back down on the shelf. Took three steps away, towards the main living space.

And then he turned, and the bottle was somehow in his hand again, and he'd flipped the top open, holding it just beneath his nose, inhaling deeply.

Completely unbidden, completely beyond his control, the thought flashed across his mind, a wild tangle of sense and image and feeling:  _it's like a meadow._

He froze. The words seemed to hover before him, a cloud of gnats.

This was pathetic.

Absolutely  _pathetic._ He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. He tightened his grip on the bottle, enough so that a dollop of the shampoo went rolling down the side, landing squarely on his wrist.

He recoiled like the stuff was made of acid.

He slammed the bottle back onto the shelf. Turned towards the faucet, yanking the handle. Scalding hot water rushed out, and he scrubbed his hand furiously...and pointedly ignored the wide, well-lit mirror that hung before him.

_He was not a soft man. He was not a weak man. He was not...swept away by...by idle thoughts, daydreams, useless drivel…_

He jerked the hand towel down, so forcefully he might have pulled the bar from the wall, had it happened a few months ago. He dried his hands, wadding it up, tossing it in the direction of the hamper.

He didn't bother to look where it had landed as he passed.

The villa had grown dimmer, the sky fading to a deep shade of blue. She'd be returning soon. He needed to compose himself. He needed the upper hand tonight. He needed to control the situation...to control her...to control  _himself._

He stormed back to the lounge, straight to the loveseat, throwing the little decorative pillows and bolsters aside, and dropping down. He sank into the cushions, the leather squeaking under his weight. His legs crossed and uncrossed at the ankle, and every muscle in his body fairly jumped with unspent energy. He forced himself to lean back against the plush cushions, trained his eyes squarely on the door -  _nowhere else. No more exploring. Nothing._

_Just wait._

And he waited.

* * *

The walk back to her villa was quiet.

She was one of the last to leave the rotunda. They'd spent the evening eating, talking, watching the sky fade darker and darker, reveling in the cool air and soft breezes that came with the setting of the sun.

It had been a relaxing time. Loose and comfortable, warm and familiar. The kind of night she'd nearly begun to look forward to, after months of terror and uncertainty.

 _Not that things were any easier now,_ she thought, frowning to herself. Over the past few weeks, the group seemed to have formed a kind of unspoken pact: they'd delicately ignored their  _purpose_ here. While it always hovered around them, coloring the edges of every task, of every meeting, of every decision...no one mentioned it. No one asked about it. No one pried, no one pushed.

Until tonight.

The moon had risen, shimmering off the ocean as she walked down pier. The afternoon's conversation followed her like a ghost, while her footsteps echoed off the planks.

" _I miss Australia," Rebecca said. She brushed sand off her foot._

_Claire tilted her head. She arched an eyebrow. "Australia?"_

_"Yeah."_

_She narrowed her eyes. "You miss...Australia. Out of everything."_

_"I miss other stuff too," Rebecca said, bristling a little. "But it's pretty high on the list. Like...koalas, yeah? Do you think they're okay?"_

_"Oh my god." Claire turned back, determined not to dignify that with an answer. Beside her, Sheva rested her chin on her knees, pulled up to her chest. The little group stared quietly out at the ocean. At the horizon, the water met the sky in a blur of color, a wild blaze of pink and violet and crimson red._

" _I miss a lot of shit," Sheva mumbled. "Beef. Chicken." She raised her eyebrows and nodded to herself. "Pork."_

" _Hot dogs," Claire added._

 _"No. No, no, no." Rebecca swiveled towards her abruptly, casting an accusatory glare. "You give me shit about koalas, and you miss_ hot dogs?"

" _You got a problem with that?"_

 _"Just that they're_ disgusting,"  _the girl snorted. She wrinkled her nose. "They barely count as food."_

_"Oh, they're food. I could probably eat fifteen right now." Claire leaned back, digging her palms into the sand. "Grilled. Burned the fuck up."_

" _That's so gross," Sheva mumbled into her knees._

_"Right. Sorry. Too trashy. I forgot where we were." Claire cleared her throat, sitting up a little straighter. "I miss white truffle butter. And...locally sourced...saffron essence…"_

_"Stop." Sheva laughed. "You don't even know what that is."_

" _On the bright side, we've got enough Ramen to choke a horse," Rebecca said, falsely chipper. "We haven't even busted out the shrimp flavor yet."_

_"Yeah. There's a good reason for that," Claire muttered._

_"It's better than hot dogs."_

_"It is absolutely, positively not…"_

_Jill sat alongside them, soundless and strange, as they bickered. Everyone in the group had grown accustomed to her quiet existence. She worked and sweated and lived alongside them from dawn to dusk, but rarely spoke to anyone._

_After a while, they'd all stopped trying._

" _I was kinda seeing a guy, at the University." Rebecca sighed wistfully. "I sort of miss him."_

_"More or less than Australia?" Sheva asked._

_She narrowed her eyes, feigning contemplation. "A little less, maybe."_

_"Ah. That's a shame." Sheva drew a looping figure eight in the sand with her fingertip. "Was he the the last person you slept with?"_

_Rebecca inhaled sharply, eyes widening. "I'm sorry,_ what?"

_"You heard me." Sheva stared down at the pattern as she traced it again and again. "If your last time was a bad one…"_

_Rebecca put a hand over her chest, feigning shock. She shook her head dramatically, her hair falling out of her eyes. "Are you suggesting -"_

" _Yes," both Claire and Sheva replied._

" _He was too young for me, ladies. Way,_ way  _too young. And if you think I'd ever..._ ever  _do that...with a student…" Rebecca pointed at them both, scolding. The corner of her lips twitched, betraying a laugh._

" _He was one of your_ students _?" Sheva asked, guffawing, her mouth in a wide, open smile._

" _He might have been. At one point." Her lips quivered in a suppressed smile as she slipped her over-sized sunglasses back on. "So strange…I can't seem to remember now."_

_Claire waved her hand dismissively. "Big youthful dick is never any good, anyway. Nobody needs that. Good riddance."_

_"Were you seeing anyone?" Sheva turned towards Claire, smirking. Rebecca turned too._

_Claire squinted out at the low, orange orb of the sun. She swallowed. She shifted in the sand._

_"No," she said, after a moment. Her voice felt a little too quiet._

_Sheva nodded. "Better no dick than bad dick at the end, yeah?"_

_"Oh my_ god."  _Rebecca tossed her head back, rolling her eyes up at the darkening sky. "It wasn't bad dick-"_

 _"So you_ did  _sleep with him."_

_"I didn't say that! I just...mean that we…"_

_Their voices faded to a dull hum, matching the roar of the waves. Claire inhaled slowly, rolling her shoulders. She hadn't thought of Neil in...a while. In too long. And they weren't seeing one another, really. They were...doing something. They were on, and off, and on, and off, and then finally crashing together at The End, desperately clinging to one another, nails like claws, making promises that tasted like alcohol and sounded like lies. Saying they'd take care of one another, saying they'd be fine, saying they wouldn't be alone or afraid or hurt or lost or..._

" _Hey." Sheva looked around, her eyes suddenly narrowing. "Has he told anyone yet?"_

_Claire blinked, pulled back into the conversation. She frowned. "Has who done what?"_

" _You know_ who."  _Sheva tossed her head in the direction of the villas._

_They all turned in time to see Wesker heading to the resort dining hall. His button-down shirt was open, blowing wide in the light breeze, and he was wearing what looked like a pair of Birkenstocks, walking with a book tucked under his arm._

_It still startled Claire to see him so...casual. She coughed a little, turning away._

" _He hasn't said a goddamn word to me," Rebecca said under her breath, kissing her hand and holding it up reverently. "Thank you, Jesus."_

" _Jill?" Sheva asked._

_Jill looked up. She was all glassy eyes and pale, thin lips, but she shook her head slowly._

" _And not you either, Redfield?" Sheva turned to Claire._

" _God, no. What the fuck?" She shook her head adamantly, loose hair from her ponytail falling across her face. She lifted her hands from the sand - suddenly sweaty - and wiped them on her shorts. She tucked the hair back behind her ear, quickly, so that they wouldn't see her hand tremble. "I'd...I mean...I'd have to kill myself, or something. I'd have to. You'd know if it was me. You'd find me hanging by a Gucci belt in that giant-ass shower."_

_"I feel you," Rebecca muttered._

" _So then who is it then? Who's the lucky breeder?" Sheva paused. "You think it's Sherry? She's got powers like him, right?"_

" _No way." Rebecca frowned. "Sherry would have told us all eighty-five times by now. Maybe he forgot about it? He's old as hell. Senile-ass…blond...bastard," she muttered, trailing off into incoherence._

" _Correct, Dr. Chambers. He's definitely not one of your_ barely legal  _students," Sheva began to laugh again. And just like that, the mood lightened._

 _The two of them bantered back and forth about the possibilities -_ surely not Moira, she's so young, I wonder why he hasn't told anyone yet, maybe he hates us all too much, I bet it's gonna be me, I've never even won a raffle before but watch this be my big lucky break, this shit's just like "The Lottery", did you guys ever read that in school -  _and Claire turned to Jill._

_She was already watching Claire. Her hair, a darker shade of dirty blond now, drifted around her face in thin wisps. Her expression was unreadable - as blank as a sheet of drywall - and she didn't say a word._

_But she watched Claire._

_She watched. Unflinching. Unfazed._

_She watched, and she knew._

_Claire looked away._

" _Alright. It's dinner time, ladies! Better hurry and get you some of them beef-flavored_ Ray-men  _noodles while they last," Rebecca drawled in a fake Southern accent. She stood, patting sand off her little shorts. Sheva reached up. Rebecca grabbed her hands, barely pulling her to standing, the both of them nearly toppling into the sand, their laughter carrying down the beach as they walked away._

_Claire felt Jill's eyes lingering on her as she stood, following their path up to the resort._

It couldn't stay a secret forever. She frowned as she neared her villa. He'd certainly been quiet recently... _too_ quiet after the lovely moment they shared in the laundry room. She'd expected some kind of retaliation by now. Some kind of precise, pointed attack. Some kind of  _response._ But two days had come and gone, and she'd barely seen him.

Maybe he  _had_ moved on.

She strode towards the front door, suddenly full of agitation. She was fertile. She had to be. She absolutely was. And he hadn't said a single word about it. Hadn't made any plans. And while he was a lot of things...a lot of awful, upsetting, horrible things...he wasn't the kind to let a plan unfold itself.

Her fingers wrapped around the handle, giving the door a firm push.

If they were going to do this again...if he hadn't decided to try someone else...he would have told her when to meet him. Where to meet him. How to meet him. What to eat. How to sit. How loudly to talk, how loudly to breathe, how quickly to move, to create the  _prime environment_  for conception.

He would have everything in line by now.

But he didn't.

 _It was Jill._ The thought hit her like a ton of bricks, knocking the air from her lungs, as the door swung open into darkness.

It was the only thing that made any sense.

It had to be Jill. Silent, shell-of-herself Jill. She wouldn't say a word about it. She wouldn't let on at all. He'd go to her whenever she was  _ready,_ and no one would ever know.

She glared as she stomped into the lounge, slamming the door behind her.

_He'd meet her in her villa...maybe he'd be on top, as broken as she was now. Maybe she wouldn't move at all. Maybe he'd be gentle with her. Maybe they'd fall into some kind of old, familiar rhythm, him and her, after years together. Maybe he knew every inch of her body. Maybe he would make her come. Maybe he'd touch her like she was made of glass, like he'd never touched a woman before, like she was the center of his universe for ten minutes, or half an hour, or the entire night, however long they took, and it would work, and he'd have what he wanted, and…_

She fumbled for the lightswitch above the little console table, flipping it on. She blinked, eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness.

He was sitting on the couch.

Her heart shivered. Stuttered. Lurched in her chest.

He was here. Unannounced, lounging in the darkness like some kind of great jungle cat, curved fangs glinting beneath the villa lights.

He was here, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her to return...because it hadn't worked the first time. When he'd been careful. When he'd been...gentle.

He hadn't hurt her. And nothing had come of it.

_This was it._

She stared at him. Watched him the way she might watch a shining black scorpion in the corner of the room.

She swallowed. She tilted her chin up. She squared her shoulders, taking a deep breath.

She'd speak first. If this was really, truly it...she'd at least let herself have that much.

"You're going to hurt me, aren't you?" she asked. Her voice was strangely even, though it sounded very distant.

She wasn't sure why she'd asked that. What kind of answer she was expecting. A sneer, maybe. His eyes boring into her, all raw red fury. His hands around her throat, fingers tightening while she tried to scream, tried to struggle.

Instead, he smiled.

It was a...strange smile. Not threatening. Not mocking.

_Condescending._

She balled her hand to a fist at her side.  _It had all been a trick, from the very start. It had all been a game. The hesitation, the uncertainty, the softness. Letting her feel bold. Letting her feel_ safe.  _He'd toyed with her, like she was a little grey mouse caught in his claws, and now he was here to finish her off._

And he was enough of a monster to smile about it.

"Get up and do it, then." Her voice was a quiet hiss. She hoped -  _prayed_  - she could keep it that way. That she could bite her tongue until it bled, choking back her cries. Or maybe he'd be thoughtful enough to cover her mouth, and keep the others from hearing.

He didn't get up. He lowered the arm that was stretched across the back of the couch. The peculiar smile stayed wedged in place.

"Don't fuck with me," she whispered. The air in the room seemed thin. She sucked in another breath through clenched teeth. "Just...do what you came to do. Get it over with."

"We'll get to that eventually," he said, and it sounded like a sigh. He ran a hand over his hair - it was loose and full, unmanicured. She watched him touch it. "I believe… we should discuss something first."

She ground her teeth. "You wanna... _discuss_  something," she mocked. "Seriously? You wanna talk now?"

He looked unimpressed. He leaned forward, rubbing his face and resting his elbows on his widespread knees. "Miss Redfield. Do you know what your closest mammalian cousin is?"

She snorted, crossing her arms. "Oh my god…"

He ignored her. "It's a primate called a bonobo. They're certainly...unique, among most animals. They copulate for pleasure. To solidify social contracts. Not simply for reproduction." His knee bounced lightly as he spoke. "They adopt face-to-face sexual positions. They may even orgasm."

She stood very still, her eyebrows furrowing.

"When bonobos  _are_  fertile, they mate more frequently." He paused. "On a curious note, the more willing the female, the more easily and often she conceives."

Her jaw clenched. Her back teeth ached.

"Humans are a bit more… sophisticated, of course. There's been some conflicting evidence that... _unfortunate_  circumstances may increase the odds of conception." He was staring past her, at the wall, at the door. He shook his head, seeming to talk half to himself. "They're questionable studies. Insufficient population sizes, short trial periods...reliance on self-reporting…just sloppy science, really."

She frowned, her eyes narrowing.  _What the fuck..._

He patted his thighs, as if to turn the page in his report. "In summary…the focus on my ejaculation has been misguided. It's actually your…pleasure...we should concern ourselves with."

She was silent.

He sat with both palms still pressed to his thighs.

His words hung in the air between them, a kind of haze she was certain she could nearly see, if she squinted closely enough.

"You want me...to come," she said, her voice flat.

He sighed, and scratched something on his arm. "Such a lofty goal." He glanced up at her. "Is it achievable?"

"No."

He smiled again. The same condescending shit-eating grin as before. "Right. Something a bit more realistic then. Are you able to…perhaps imagine I am someone else? Someone more palatable?"

She blinked and swallowed hard. "Pretend you're Leon? That's what you want?"

He looked away, his eyes hard, suddenly unreadable. He'd abandoned the egotistical smirk at the mention of Leon's name. "It's not about  _what I want_. It's about tricking your own body the way you tricked mine."

They stared warily at each other across the space.

"Well?" he asked, voice teetering on the edge of impatience.

"I need to shower first." She looked away, walking towards the bathroom with her stomach in her throat.

* * *

He watched as she emerged from the bathroom. She wore nothing but an oversized t-shirt, hanging off one freckled shoulder.

His eyes followed her every move. She ignored him where he sat on her bed, and went into the kitchen, scrunching her hair dry with a towel. It was dark when it was wet. Not at all like the coppery waves that had tumbled down her back in a crooked, messy ponytail, sticking to his skin, brushing against his lips...

On tip-toe, she reached into a cupboard for a blue glass. The shirt rode up, exposing the elastic of her blue panties, cutting into the back of her thigh, just below the cheek of her —

He looked away quickly, his jaw tensing.

The refrigerator door opened and closed.

"Want anything to drink?" she asked, her voice controlled and stiff.

_Yes._

"No. Thank you."

He heard the beautiful wood floors creak under her feet as she walked past him, around the great bed, to the other side. She set the glass down on the side table. From the corner of his eye, he watched her.

He swallowed. "No wine tonight," he remarked. His nervous hand twitched in the direction of her drink; the glass was half-full with water.

She took a deep breath. "I'm gonna try this sober."

He nodded, feeling his pulse race throughout his entire body. His skin was alive, was trembling in time with the terrified beating of his heart.

"You're wearing… a lot of cologne," she said then, the both of them still staring straight ahead.

His breath caught. His teeth ground together.

_A lot of cologne._

_You're wearing_ a lot  _of cologne._

He had thought...it might make things more  _pleasant_ for her, if he tried to appear put-together...

The fingers on his left hand jerked, almost reflexively.

She had the audacity...the  _nerve..._ to mention it. Out loud. To say something, as though he'd...he'd  _preened_ for her. As though he'd done more than dash some on as an afterthought. It was a simple, basic courtesy. It was a gesture of civility. It was meant to make this all feel more  _normal,_ it was a way of softening the edges of their damned  _circumstances…what kind of desperate fool did she think him in her perverse little —_

"It's nice," she said casually, combing through her wet hair with her fingers.

He blinked.

He looked down at his hands, folded neatly in his lap.

_It's nice._

He hated the way his anger dissipated in the wake of those two words. As if she'd licked her fingertips and snuffed out a candle.

_It's nice._

He hated the relief that brought him. The self-satisfaction. The  _joy._

She stirred up his emotions so casually. So thoughtlessly. Like mixing a can of paint - careless and messy,  _feelings_  and  _thoughts_  splashing from the container and dripping down the side.

In the span of ten seconds, she could leave his mental equilibrium in ruins.

"Would you like me to turn off the lights?" He barely recognized his own voice as he asked.

"Sure," she said. She, of course, sounded firm and steady, and far too brave.

He sighed and rolled off the bed.

"So...we're gonna  _really_ do this?" she asked when his back was to her.

He paused at the switch on the far wall. "I'm not sure what you mean." He turned the dimmer until the lights were very low. The villa was bathed in a soft, eerie glow. "Did we not  _really do it_ last month?"

"Don't be an asshole. I  _mean_ …we're going to make believe this is real? Like…touching…each other?"

He turned to her. She was sitting up at the head of her bed, a pillow in her lap, a kind of shield. She looked at him with nervous eyes, her leg bouncing under the cover.

He licked his lips. His disgusting heart pounded almost painfully in his chest. "If that feels more… _authentic_ to you, Miss Redfield, then we can…touch each other." He took a deep breath. "You'll have to teach me, of course, how you prefer to be touched. You're all so different."

She laughed to herself, looking up incredulously. "We're all so different…" she whispered. "All of us sluts…"

"All of you  _humans_ ," he corrected her.

She stared at him, her features falling, suddenly very serious.

She seemed as if she might cry.

He looked down. "Would you like me to take my clothes off?"

"Whatever." She shrugged. But then…she leaned forward and pulled her own shirt over her head.

He swallowed, and his feet, his legs - willful, autonomous things - carried him, without his knowing, to the other side of the bed. She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced up at him.

He was terrified.

He had lived his life surrounded by monsters of every sort. He had faced death once before, tasted it,  _embraced_ it, and returned as something new. Something changed. Something… _above_.

But this...her, her bed, the low light of her villa, the soft fragrance of her shampoo, her damp hair spilling over her dappled shoulder, her shirt so casually tossed aside,  _her..._

He was somehow more than  _terrified._ He was well and truly  _below._

He had told himself, as he sat in the gathering dark, that he would be in control. Complete control. Tightly-reined, steel-gripped, unflinching  _control,_ all throughout the night. But as he stood before her, he felt the same changes - undisciplined and feeble and disgustingly human - overtake his body one by one. Blood warming, blood rushing, pulse rising, skin humming. Pressure growing in his groin as he hardened at the sight of her, at the  _thought_ of her.

Haltingly, he grabbed the back of his own shirt and pulled. It slipped over his head, down his arms, joining hers on the floor. His hands trembled, coming to his fly.

She was watching. He knew she was watching. He could feel her eyes following his movements. She was watching him fumble with the button. Watching him strip down. Watching him make a damned fool of himself. The button snagged on a loose thread, and his hands were sweating, actually  _sweating,_ fingers slipping on the metal. He had to fight to keep from swearing under his breath. It was bad enough that she could see him cracking, while she reclined half-nude against the headboard, after so gracefully shedding her top...

He stopped, his body rigid and still, his breath trapped in his lungs.

After a moment, she reached for him, leaning across the bed, and her hands patiently found what he was struggling with. Her face a mask of concentration, she undid the button at the top of his fly, and then slowly pulled down the zipper - careful and calm, tugging the material out, away from his body, so that she didn't touch his erection, so that her knuckles didn't graze the short coarse hairs of his belly. He watched. The sensation of her  _undressing_ him - methodically, deliberately - was distant, and airy. He felt as if he was watching from above his own body.

Before he could stop himself, his hand…lifted, and his fingers brushed her dark, wet mane, brushed her soft cheek.

She flinched and leaned away from him. She looked  _stunned_ , touching her face where he had.

The fingers of his offending hand curled in on themselves. "Not yet?" he asked, breathless and confused.  _Stupid. Imbecile. Stupid, stupid, stupid..._

She stared at him. She opened her mouth as if to speak… but she did not.

His lip curled. "This is  _ridiculous_ ," he sneered. He bent over, snatching his shirt off the floor.

"Wait," she said softly.

"This is not working, Miss Redfield, because you cannot seem to make up your mind -" He pushed his arms through the sleeves.

She shook her head. "Please, just stop…listen, I -"

"You ask for something more  _real_ , whatever you believe  _that_ means. I provide you with it, and it's still not enough to -" The shirt was backwards. He shook his head, removing it again. "It's still not enough for you to simply -"

Her palm slapped the bed, bouncing off the mattress. "Be patient!" she finally yelled at him.

He stopped, the shirt in his hands.

"Just be…patient," she said, glaring at him. They were both silent for a moment. "You tried to kill me once. It's not gonna…I can't just —"

He laughed in disbelief. "That was  _years ago._ "

"You tried to fucking  _kill_ me!" She lunged forward on the bed, lunged at him.

"Well, I'm not trying to fucking  _kill_ you now, Claire!" he bellowed. "I'm just trying to touch you!"

He weighed his options, a split-second debate. It wasn't too late for him to leave, and let her be  _for good_ , alone with all of her violence. The door was mere feet away. He could exit with his pride, graceful and cold as always. He'd lose nothing. He'd done it before; he'd walked out on women who were objectively better than her. Stunningly beautiful, obscenely wealthy, vastly smarter women.

But they weren't  _Claire Redfield_.

They hadn't fought with him, hadn't struggled with him, hadn't met him blow for blow. And they certainly hadn't  _terrified_  him, those superior women he'd made fools of a lifetime ago. He stared at her, saw the muscles in her lovely, pale arms well-defined, her heavy breasts quivering with each bitter breath, her wild hair like a fiery crown, and her pulse racing so hard he could see it in her throat. She was like an animal - a feral creature, something hard and fast and full of rage.

She sat back on her knees, scowling. "Do it then," she growled.

She had called to him. And weak as he was to  _her_ , he had no choice but to respond.

He reached out, his fingers trembling. She watched his hand - suspicious and wary, breathing hard through her nose.

His knuckles grazed her cheek again, as if to prove a point. Her skin was soft, smooth, her cheekbones anything but delicate. She held very still as he ran the backs of his nervous fingers down the proud cut of her jaw, set tight and square; when they reached the end of her jawline, he let his fingertips drift beneath her chin, lifting it so that they looked into each other.

Her eyes flashed bright blue - arrogant and defiant - as she seemed to peer down to the bottom of him.

He wondered what she saw.

He wondered if he truly wanted to know.

With her eyes locked firmly on his, he continued, his fingers trailing down - down the slope of her chin to her pale, exposed throat. She didn't flinch away, but he felt her swallow, felt her tensing. He touched her hesitantly. Curiously.

He had touched her here before. Back then, years ago, she was rain-soaked, shivering. She was afraid, as his gloved fingers had tightened over her windpipe. She'd clawed at his wrist. She'd gasped for air.

She'd been very young. Very far from home. Very much alone.

He had... _hurt_  her. And she remembered, as her nostrils flared, as her pulse hammered beneath her skin.

 _This was a mistake,_ he thought, fingertips resting just above her sternum. He glanced down at his hand. At the rise and fall of it with each breath she took.  _This was all a terrible...terrible mistake, and he should go, he should leave…_

Her clavicle was lovely in the low lighting. He traced it, a perfectly sculpted line, marveling at the way shadows pooled against her porcelain skin.

_This was a terrible, irreparable mistake._

He kept his touch featherlight, following a line of freckles that swept along her collarbone, back towards her shoulder and neck. The hard edge of suspicion had left her gaze, and she watched him a bit more inquisitively now, her lips parting.

_Her lips._

_He hadn't thought of…_

_Would she want him to…_

_Would he be_ able  _to…_

He felt her hand on his. He'd stopped at her shoulder, fingertips resting there. She covered them with her own, slight pressure guiding his hand back down. Back down the slope of her shoulder, across her bicep...down to the generous swell of her breast.

He cupped the side of it carefully, gently, nearly cradling it. He looked down at his fingers - the way they curled around and beneath her, the way her skin dimpled under their slight pressure. He tried to imagine what normal men would...what Leon had…

The tip of his tongue darted across his bottom lip, suddenly too dry. Leon would do something bold. Something self-assured. Grope her, perhaps. Knead the flesh of her breast beneath his fingers. Her nipple, still the lightest rose-pink, was very near his thumb. Leon would certainly touch it...graze it with his thumb, to roll it between his fingertips until it stiffened to a small, eager peak, fondle her so she arched up towards his hand, begging for more...

Desperate, disoriented, he looked into her face.

And he could feel the awful, pathetic  _helplessness_ carved across his own.

She rose up to kneeling. She drew herself nearer to him. Her hand fell away from his, reaching out towards him. Her fingers slipped under the waistband of his loosened shorts, tugging gently, pulling him closer still. His thighs bumped against the tall sideboard, and he had no escape from her insistence, nowhere to go...and so he crawled up, up onto the mattress.

They knelt on the bed, face to face, the gauzy canopy fluttering around them as a merciful southern breeze swept through her villa.

"Take these off," she whispered, her cool fingers still in his shorts.

He nodded, and obeyed her without question.

* * *

 

_[We want to take a moment to thank everyone who reads and comments, favorites and shares. This fic means so much to us so far. Thanks, too, to the quiet, reliable Claire/Wesker fans who we can always count on to follow us, like Sofistinha - we appreciate your readership. Thanks so much for your support, whatever form it takes!]_


	5. December 21st, 1997

 

* * *

  _"Remember tonight…for it is the beginning of always."_

_-Dante Alighieri_

* * *

 

_**March 28, 2009** _

Jill hesitated.

Every time, she hesitated. She stood at the threshold, wavering, waiting, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.

It was as if she needed some kind of signal. He was never quite sure what she was searching for - not a flicker of movement through the door's peephole, or the telltale creak of floorboards as someone walked by. It was never anything so precise. But she would wait, looking and listening, taking slow, deep breaths, before finally raising her hand to rap on the door.

This time, it was more than a simple hesitation.

She chewed her bottom lip. A nervous tic. A thing he hadn't seen her do in years; the P30 had broken her of those useless habits. It had honed her, and sharpened her.

But they were both getting a little  _dull_ now, in the absence of their chemical boosters. A little more human, each and every day.

And this excursion around the world had begun to wear on them.

He had anticipated difficulties with some of them. From Kennedy, who would have his guard up, a full arsenal ready. From Burton, desperate to keep what remained of his family safe.

 _Just wait,_ Jill had muttered, low and dark, as they'd climbed the tight, winding stairwell of the apartment building in D.C. Their footsteps echoed off the metal. There was little need for stealth anymore...the city had been dark for days.

He wondered, briefly, if they were already too late. If the girl had disappeared into the ruins of the world. If they'd break in to find she'd hung herself from the bathroom door.

Her name had been the first to leave Chris's lips, when he'd begged, crying on his knees. Without hesitation, his sister had been the first on his list when he made his desperate plea, signing all their lives away.

And now she would be the last of their little  _missions._

 _Just wait._ Wesker frowned, mulling over the words. He hadn't seen the girl in...over a decade, now. She was a teenager back on Rockfort. She'd put up a fight - a sloppy, unfocused, untrained one, but a fight, nonetheless.

He'd kept a close eye on her over the years. She had certainly been no stranger to the world of bioterrorism. And in that time, she'd grown. She'd learned. She'd hardened herself.

She had more than a hint of her brother in her.

He sighed, reaching above Jill's head. He knocked three times on the door - hard, jolting raps against the metal. It echoed down the empty hallway. He took a deep breath, stepping away, out of view.

And he waited. One hand in his pocket, propofol injector at the ready. One hand resting on the gun at his hip...a precaution.

Jill centered herself before the peephole. She tilted her face up. She rolled one shoulder, loosened her stance.

For a moment, nothing happened.

A moment that felt far, far too long.

 _They were too late._ He rolled his eyes, slipping the injector back into his pocket. Redfield would be devastated. Useless for months to come, mourning his little sister. He wondered what they should tell him... _the apartment was empty, no trace of her? They'd broken in to find her brains splattered across the living room wall? They'd-_

There was a sudden, mad scramble on the other side of the door. Something heavy moving, dragging against the floor. Locks clicking out of place. A frantic, unintelligible cry, cursing, fingers fumbling with the knob and scratching like claws.

The apartment door swung open, so fiercely it slammed against the wall inside.

"Oh my god." The voice was thick with sobbing. "Oh my god. Jill?  _Jill?"_ He couldn't see the girl, but he could hear the tremble in her words, the erratic spike of her pulse, the tightness of her breath.

"Hey...hey Claire." Jill spoke softly, gently, but detachedly. She didn't move an inch. He saw her eyes dart from the girl's face, and then nervously down - to her hands, perhaps.

 _Just wait,_ she'd told him.

_Just wait._

There was silence. There was breath. There were creaking floors, and there was wind whipping outside the building, and…

"You're dead," the girl whispered.

Jill opened her mouth. Closed it. His fingers tightened around the grip of his gun.

"Am...am I dead? Am I dead too?"

"Claire, sweetheart...no…" Jill took a step forward, her hand raising a fraction of an inch, like she was reaching out to her old friend, to take her in her arms, and embrace her, and stroke her hair. "You aren't dead. I'm not...Chris is still…"

The little speech she'd tried to give so many times came out in halting, stuttered words. His nostrils flared as he breathed in deeply - the air from the apartment was stale and dry. The girl was covered in sweat. Pure adrenaline coursed through her veins.

The floor squeaked as she took a step away from Jill.

"No. No, you're dead. He's gone." Her voice was stronger now. Sharper. Jill's hand fell back to her side.

"I...need you to come with me, Claire," she said, very quietly. "This is hard to explain. There's...a lot you don't know, and…"

She froze mid-sentence. She stepped back. Her eyes widened in the darkness of the hall.

"No." A pointed response. No shaking. No trembling. "You're dead. I know it. I know you're dead."

"Just...listen to me…"

"Shut up!" The Redfield girl's voice echoed down the hall. "Shut the fuck up!" And Jill held both her hands up, taking another step back, eyes flashing towards where he stood-

He was on Claire in an instant.

She screamed. She screamed more loudly than he'd thought possible, high and sharp. He grabbed her, slamming her wrist against the wall two agonizing times, until she dropped the pistol she held. It clattered to the floor. Jill ran in behind him, kicking the gun away.

Wesker pinned Claire to the wall, wrenching her arm into an unnatural angle, his free hand searching for the injector. For the damned  _injector._ All the while, she shrieked, clawed, bit, yowling like a wounded animal, nails catching his face, teeth sinking into the skin of his forearm. He felt the sharp sting of the cuts - something he wasn't used to, having relied on the boosters so long.

Her elbow caught his lip as she tried to slip away from him. He tasted blood.

He growled, licking the blood from his teeth, wrestling her to the floor. She tried to scramble away, fingers like talons against the slippery floor, but he pulled her back tight to him, a spider catching his prey - her back to his chest, his legs entwined with her own, holding her still.

One hand wrapped around her milky throat. She pulled at it, scratched at it, while he frantically patted his pockets, while she screamed and bucked against him and dug her elbow into his ribs, gasping for air...

"Jesus Christ! Don't hurt her!" Jill begged.

He finally found the damned hypodermic in a back pocket. He bit the cap off, spitting it out onto the floor, and swiftly sank the needle into the skin between her neck and her shoulder.

She keened, arching up violently in one last-ditch effort to free herself. She reached out, reached towards Jill, her fingertips close to her jeans. Her arm wavered, straining…

...and then it dropped as she slipped under. Her body sagged against him, limp and heavy.

For several seconds, neither he nor Jill dared to move. The only sound in the apartment was his labored breathing. He slumped against the wall, exhausted, letting his head fall back. The empty syringe rolled across the floor.

"Check for supplies," he panted, jerking his head towards Jill. More blood trickled from the gash in his lip. He raised his fingertips to the wound; they came away red.

Jill stared at him, stuck in place.

"Supplies, Valentine!" he barked, wiping his hand on the leg of his pants. He wasn't about to let her stand there and watch him bleed. Let her gawk at his open wounds, red and raw, and wonder about his new... _condition._

It had been weeks since his last injection of the PG67A/W. And now he bled like a man. Like any man.

He snarled as she nodded, turning away, headed towards the little kitchen. He waited until he heard the sound of cabinets opening, the clatter of things being moved from shelf to shelf, to try and reposition himself.

It  _hurt._ Another thing he wasn't used to. He struggled to sit up straighter, and the spot where her elbow had collided with his ribs throbbed in protest. He looked down at the girl, still slumped against him...now with her eyes closed, and her face peaceful. She laid on him, her body rising and falling with each of his breaths.

She looked...terrible, to put it frankly. Her skin was sallow. Her face was hollow, sunken, with dark bags beneath her eyes. Her lips were chapped. Her hair was limp and stringy, tossed around her face, some of the ends tangled into knots.

The end of the world had worn away at her.

But in spite of that, he saw some of her brother in her. Not as much as he might have expected, but they were of the same stock...she was no frail, fragile thing.  _She made that known quite well,_ he thought, flinching as he pushed himself away from the wall. He moved as if to shove Claire off his chest, but a sudden sound down the hall gave him pause.

He glanced towards the kitchen. Jill's hand went to the holster inside her jacket.

They both froze.

The sound again - a dull thud. Something landing on the floor in the other room.

Jill crept back to the living room. Wesker looked up at her, nodding expectantly.

She unbuttoned the holster and slowly pulled out her handgun. She crept down the hall in a crouch, one foot placed silently in front of the other, her arms straight as she aimed the gun at the floor.

Whatever was in the room certainly wasn't human. It knocked something over with a crash - a shattering noise that made Jill flinch. She glanced back at Wesker, still sprawled on the floor with Claire in his arms. Exasperated, he sneered at her, jerking his head towards the door.

She sighed and brought the gun up, readying herself. She reached out, slowly and carefully - the door, already partially open, gave way with a slight push.

A mangy black cat crept out, slinking around the edge of the frame. It sauntered past Jill, ran down the hall, and jumped up to walk across the back of Claire's couch. It stopped there, on the very edge, and sat, regarding its master and Wesker with a judgmental yellow stare.

Wesker watched through narrowed eyes as it groomed its paws. Then he tipped his head back against the wall, sighing heavily. Listening to Jill as she continued her sweep of the apartment. Feeling the soft brush of the girl's breath against his neck.

He closed his eyes.

At long last, they were nearly ready.

* * *

She knelt before him in the moonlight.

 _The villa lights,_  he corrected himself. In the plain, dim villa lights hanging overhead. They were dull. They were yellow.

He wished, desperately, that he had turned them lower. Turned them off. Shattered the bulbs and drawn the blinds and left the room as black as ink. Because this - this moment, where they stared at one another on her bed, and he pitched forward awkwardly as the mattress dipped between them - left him feeling as if a spotlight shone down on him, bright white and blistering hot, baring everything.

It seemed to shine on her as well.

She was...bolder than him. Wearing nothing but the simple blue panties, she sat back on her heels, and regarded him carefully.

She certainly wasn't the frightened thing he'd found in the claustrophobic apartment months ago; no longer ghostly pale and sunken and skittish. The heavy tropical sun had darkened her freckles, and left a low-scooping line where the neck of her tank top normally rested against her chest. It had brightened her hair, and strands of gold caught the low light above her. It had colored her cheeks, and left her smelling like salt and soft island air.

She seemed to blossom beneath it.

 _She was fertile._ That was all. He ground his molars together, focusing on that tiny, tangible detail. She was a fertile woman, pheromones seeping from her like perfume. The whole of her body was designed to make him react this way - to entice him, to ensnare him.

It was nothing unique to her. Biology. Evolution. An unremarkable human body, performing an unremarkable cycle...

She inhaled heavily. Her shoulders moved with the breath.

Her breasts followed her shoulders.

Up.

Down.

He swallowed. His tongue felt like hardened, cracked clay. "Should I...or, would you...like me to…"

She shifted slightly, leaning towards him. Her hair, still damp, fell across her shoulder, across the dip of her collarbone and the swell of her cleavage.

Her fingertips brushed his forearm.

He jolted at the contact - so light he thought he might have imagined it.

She kept her eyes locked on his. They were a fierce, flickering blue. Not the quiet, crystalline blue he'd grown so used to with Jill. Not the glacial, frozen blue he'd seen in his own mirror so many years ago. Claire Redfield's eyes were a  _biting_ kind of blue, deep and wild. The heart of a flame.

And she stared at him. Into him. Through him.

He couldn't help but stare back.

 _Evolution,_ he told himself again, as she moved slowly, and very carefully, her fingertips tracing a deliberate trail along the slope of his muscle.  _Evolution._ A basic, primitive urge, buried in the darkest parts of their hindbrains, woven into the fabric of their genetics.

She was striking, yes. But any woman would be. Any woman who was healthy, and young, and ripe, and ready. Any woman with any color of eyes, any color of hair, any peculiarly strong nose, any full lower lip, any sharp jaw and soft throat and heavy breasts and…

He inhaled deeply when she touched his face.

He hadn't noticed her touch leaving his arm.

He hadn't noticed her reaching out to him.

He did notice the slight...very slight...tremor in her hand, as her fingertips rested against his jaw.

He watched her lips as she spoke. Her voice was vague and distant, lost behind the heavy, leaping thrum of his pulse, but her words were very clear.

 _Don't be afraid,_ she said.

She was soft and cool and gentle. Her index finger slipped a fraction of an inch, dragging down the line of his chin.

Her thumb traced the corner of his mouth.

And with that - as if he were possessed, as if his body was made of gears and springs and wires all beyond his control - he touched her.

She didn't flinch away when his hand found the curve of her hip. He rested it there, just above the elastic band of her panties, along the gentle contour of her bones.

Her hand dropped from his face, down to the ridge of his shoulder. Down further to the plane of his chest, settling near his sternum.

It became a kind of call and response - his hand tracing the hourglass valley of her waist. Her fingers brushing across the jut of his clavicle. Her hand sweeping down his torso, over his ribs. His fingers snaking behind her, following the arc of her spine, finding the beautiful dimples of her lower back.

She touched him hesitantly, the barest strokes against skin that felt as if it were on fire. Touches that felt like flint sparking against steel. The whole of his body trembled with each new path she found. Every nerve shivered beneath her fingertips. He ached as his need grew - as it spread through his flesh and his bones and the core of his marrow. He ached with the need to touch more of her, to hold more of her. For her to touch more of  _him._ For the coy gentleness to melt away in the face of something feral, something roaring. Something that echoed all through the soft shape of her body, calling to him.

A silent, steady call.

Neither of them spoke. There were sounds - rustling fabric and short tight breaths and the rushing sea outside the windows - but beyond that, the world seemed to have halted around them. It was held tight and still by the same humid night air that wound about their bodies like vines.

His hand found purchase on her hip again, resting against the comforting swell of it. Her skin was still damp from the shower.

Her hand drifted lower. Her fingertips grazed the taut muscles of his abdomen. Just above… _almost_ …

Involuntarily, his cock jumped. He nearly gasped at it,  _she_  nearly gasped at it. A humiliating drop of pre-ejaculate gathered at the slit and pooled in the hood of his foreskin. It was embarrassing. It was  _infuriating._ It was all because of the proximity of her hand...of her cool-warmth, of her body pressed so near to him, and still not  _on_ his, where he so desperately, weakly, pitifully wanted it to be. His breathing became shallow.

He watched her. He  _watched_ her like she was some preternatural thing - like she was ephemeral, fleeting, nothing but pale light filtered through a fine mist.

And she looked as if she couldn't quite believe she was here again.  _Here,_  on the bed, nearly nude, his hands on her.

Her bright blue eyes were wide. Her brows were raised. Her lips were parted in the slightest questioning pout.

"Can I touch you?" she asked, barely a breath.

He swallowed, disoriented, trying to keep up, as her hand caressed his stomach, as his muscles fluttered and twitched. It was a simple question. Four words. Only four of them. He struggled to snap them together, to turn them the right direction. They were puzzle pieces in his hands, edges bent and torn and woefully mismatched. He couldn't make sense of them.

_Can I touch you._

"What?" he whispered, dazed.

He watched her eyes dart away from his.

He watched the edge of a tooth catch her bottom lip, worrying the soft pink skin.

He watched her take a slow, long breath of air, and hold it in her lungs. Her shoulders drew back as she inhaled.

And the very tips of her fingers traced the neat line of short blond hair on his lower belly. He stared at her hand, his mouth open, lips throbbing. He knew what was coming; he understood it on the most basic, animal level...

...but he gasped as her hand closed around his cock. He grabbed her wrist - a reflex. A hardwired response. His pulse pounded in his temples. His skin stung.

 _Look at your ugly little prick…getting hard, boy?_ The old voice echoed in his head. Always there. Usually quiet. Usually a dim murmur, lost behind a thousand other noises.

Now, it was loud enough to shatter him.

Her fingers curled around his girth, unaware of the way his chest seized, the way his heart hammered behind his ribs. She pressed against the underside of him, her thumb stroking the top of his length.

He squeezed her wrist, wincing at the new sensation. Recoiling from her touch. The voice sunk its teeth into him with steel-trap jaws.  _Finally starting to grow some hair...that's a shame..._

"Shh…" She soothed him, as though she could hear it too.

He looked into her eyes, panicked and breathless. The hand between his legs loosened its grip. Her other hand rose to his face again, cradling his hot cheek.

_Going to cry again, are you? Don't like the way that feels?_

The words were hazy and distant, and as clear and cutting as shards of glass.

He turned to her hand, let her run her fingertips over his eyebrow, down the edge of his hairline. He breathed hard and nuzzled her palm.

_There you go. Don't need to make this any harder on yourself...wouldn't want to hurt you..._

"Let me touch you," she whispered, her pupils enormous and full in the low light.

He wanted to trust her. He wanted to let her do whatever she pleased with him. He wanted to...

_Best enjoy it while you can...won't be many people willing to touch you..._

He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, ignoring the way his stomach churned. His body felt raw and rigid, a disgusting, flayed thing. All wet muscle and stringy sinew, quivering for everyone to see. He swallowed the urge to cry out. He choked on it.

The voice hovered like a billowing cloud of smoke. His ears rang with it.  _Good boy, don't be shy, that's right, you liked that, made a big mess didn't you..._

Her thumb brushed his cheek.

 _Shut up,_ he thought, closing his eyes as tightly as he could, tamping down the voice.  _Shut up._

He would try. For her. For this one night. He would try, for the child she might conceive, if he was tender and generous enough…

Reluctantly, he let go of her.

She opened her hand around his cock, staring down between them. She traced a great blue vein that forked and spidered, from base to tip.

The meaty, swollen head of him, half-sheathed, wept into her palm, a steady trickle of pre-ejaculate, thin and clear. She squeezed him gently, working out more of his fluid. It dripped down her wrist, her forearm. He watched, his stomach in knots, his heart in his throat. He studied her face in the low light, scrutinized her expression for any trace of disgust, revulsion… but he found none.

She stroked him once, down his length, toward her belly. He felt his foreskin roll over the aching muscle of his cock, following her delicate grasp.

"Does that hurt?" she asked.

He shook his head, his mouth suddenly full and wet. She glanced up into his eyes, and then began to pump slowly, up and down the length of him. The both of them were spellbound by her ministrations, by the way his venous skin pulled back from his engorged, leaking head. His pre-come eased the glide of her fingers over his rigid flesh.

" _Oh_ ," escaped his lips. An anguished sound that seemed to inspire her. She moved nearer, so close that the tops of their thighs touched, so close that his cock, in her fist, curved up her naked stomach, leaving a sticky wet spot on her smooth, freckled skin. Almost imperceptibly, he thrust into her hand.

"Feels good?" She asked, and he felt her gaze on his mouth.

"Yes." He could barely nod, barely breathe.  _Yes_ , he thought.  _Yes, it feels amazing. Yes, like that. Yes, a thousand times, Claire._

She reached under his shaft with her other hand, gently taking his testicles in her palm, weighing them. He was heavy, he  _knew_ he was heavy - in this heat, in this bed, in her hand. She rolled his turgid sack, feeling each swollen teste, lightly pinching and rubbing the thick, loose skin between her thumb and forefinger.

"Will you touch me?" she implored, her voice deep and throaty while her hands stroked and squeezed him.

"Are you sure?" He looked at her, searching her face for deception. But she held his gaze, held  _him,_ unflinching. He groaned as she ran her thumb over the slit in the head of his cock, spreading a bead of pre-come.

"Yes," she said, and she let him go, easing back to take off her panties. He stared openly, hungrily, hypnotized by the sight of her stripping down for him.  _For him_. She had removed all of her clothes. She had asked him to touch her. She was going to  _accept_ him, all of him, inside of her. A gift, surely, of the highest order.

The blue panties slid over her thighs, slipped over her ankles. She abandoned them on the nightstand and then crawled back to him where he knelt, waiting for her, his cock harder than he'd thought possible. She took his hand in her own, bringing it to the sacred space between her thighs.

He flinched at the first touch of her, pulling away, the rough pads of his fingers suddenly wet with her. He looked up at her face to see if she'd taken offense, to see if an apology was in order. But she was only watching as he rubbed the curious slickness between his fingertips. She licked her lips, her own hand coming back to his tumescence. She massaged him, slowly rolling the loose foreskin up and down his cock.

Emboldened, he sought her cleft again. She took a deep breath and held it, arching towards him, her eyes nearly closed. She wasn't nearly as shy as him.

He cupped her mons first, and rubbed her gently with his palm, eliciting a moan. His middle finger burrowed between the small, silky folds, and stroked, never quite entering. She was incredibly wet. He lifted his finger from her soft, split lips, the both of them looking down, seeing the evidence of her arousal… of her fertility. A string of her nectar stretched between them.

He wanted to study her. To part her thighs wide and stare at the labia he knew were perfect, to hold her open and gaze inside of her, to learn by heart the narrow opening of her body. He put his finger back to her, dragged her moisture up to the tiny pearl at the very top of her pussy. Her clitoris was as delicate, as hidden as the rest of her. He touched her very softly at first, feeling her jerk against his hand, feeling her steady masturbation of him falter as she gave in to her own pleasure.

Circling the little nub with his wet fingertip, watching her eyes flutter closed, her brow furrow, he imagined bringing her to orgasm. Seeing her fall apart  _because_  of what he was doing to her. Putting his mouth to hers as she came, and swallowing her cries.

"Inside," she whispered. "Feel inside me."

His cock bobbed at her words. The tip of his finger trailed down, parting her swollen lips again, seeking her tender hole. He found her and slipped inside, a fraction of an inch. That alone made her tighten around him. His heart pounded in his head. He began to thrust carefully - in and out, only to the first knuckle, a maddeningly slow sawing.

She let go of him, bracing herself on his shoulders as she let her knees spread farther,  _farther_ , until she was spread wide, giving him access to every part of her. She rolled her hips, her eyes still closed as she seemed to concentrate on each sensation.

"More," she breathed.

He dipped into her,  _reached_  inside of her, felt her walls close around him, felt her pulsate and take him… all the way to the tight ring of her cervix. He caressed her there, reverently, before languidly taking her with his finger.

She pressed her face to the crook of his neck, rocking against his hand. Her breath was hot on his skin, shuddering as she inhaled, nearly sighing as she exhaled. Her muscles clenched around his finger, soft and pink and wet, and he could feel the whole of her body tremble as he thumbed her clitoris again.

In a sudden burst of  _something_  - boldness, perhaps, or primal lust, or foolishness  _-_ he pulled away from her. She twitched, hips following his hand as it withdrew. She raised her face from his shoulder, drawing back to look at him…and he guided her down towards the pillows.

 _Something different,_ he thought, as she moved with him. Her hair fanned around her. Her skin was flushed against the white sheets. Her lips were lovely in the near-dark, shining and swollen.

_They had decided...to try something different…_

He looked into her eyes - cornflower, cloudless skies, the color of heavy summer - and his arms trembled as he anchored himself on either side of her. She was very still beneath him, and try as she might to hide it behind her unflinching mask, he saw the slightest hint of fear on her face. He heard the slightest spike in her pulse. He felt the slightest hitch to her breath.

 _Don't be afraid._ He wished he could say it. He wished it would fall from his lips as easily, as surely, as it did from hers. He wished it would sound like a promise, the way it had on her tongue. Not an empty, hollow phrase. A useless thing, a thing she could never hold, could never keep, could never  _believe..._

Her thighs grazed his as she opened beneath him, slow and tentative.

He parted his lips. Closed them again. Shook above her as she bent her knees, angling herself towards him.

She reached up...reached for his face, but stopped, letting her hand drop to his shoulder, his quivering bicep. Her fingers curled around the muscle, squeezing with the barest pressure, like a kind of quiet reassurance.

He clenched his jaw tight, closing the space between them. The tip of his cock brushed the velvet of her sex. He reached down, grasping himself, pumping himself, so that his swollen head gently split her silky lips. He massaged her with his glans, gathered her wetness, pulling back just enough to spread her honey down his length with his trembling fingers.

At his brief retreat from her body, she slowly folded her leg over his. She locked herself to him, her thigh against his, her heel pressing into his calf…guiding him back to her most sensitive place.

He wouldn't make her wait.

He sucked in air through clenched teeth. She panted, tilting her hips, closing her eyes.

He pressed against her. Into her.

And like last time, she enveloped him, inch by blissful, torturous inch.

It was terrible. It was exquisite, unbearable  _pleasure._ She was so much softer than he remembered. She was warm and cool and slick and tight, a tangle of everything. His thoughts stuttered and lurched, crashing together, piling atop one another.

She made a sound like a sigh. And she unfurled for him, little by little, as he settled inside her.

He was buried deep, throbbing with every pulse of her muscles around him. He was very close to her face, to her lips, which he watched with a kind of mesmerization - the way they parted and pouted with each of her shallow breaths, like she was struggling for words.

He wondered what she would taste like.

His chest, his stomach, his cock, his entire being  _tightened_ at the thought. Scattered images flashed through his mind: his mouth on hers, on her jaw, on the pale column of her throat, on her shoulders and down, down further, where her full breasts threatened to brush his chest with each heaving breath, where her hips and her thighs sloped to the dark  _v_ between her legs, where he was sheathed in pearl-smooth skin that seemed as if it were molded to him…

He jumped when her hands drifted to his back. His muscles strained with the effort of keeping himself over her, inside her, unmoving. They settled against his shoulder blades, her cool fingers splayed across his skin.

She urged him down. Urged him against her, flush with her body, skin to skin.

And like she had done before, his face found the soft curve of her neck, and he buried himself there. A place where his gaze couldn't linger on her. Where he wouldn't think of putting his mouth to her, biting her gently, tasting her skin. He hid himself, his  _desire,_  with his eyes closed, inhaling the scent of her hair and her body.

And he began.

It was much the same as it was before - a steady pace, dragging out and sliding in. Slow, careful pulls and thrusts. His organ responding to hers, hardness to match her softness.

And it was  _nothing_  like it was before. What had been a tense, grating incident felt strangely smooth and fluid now. She didn't press him down to the mattress, grinding frantically against him, teeth gritted, muscles rigid. Now, her body moved with his. She tilted her hips, and she butterflied her legs, and she spread herself wider for him, drew him in deeper with each languid thrust.

There were no words this time. No needling questions, no pointed barbs. There was nothing but the creaking of the bed and the soft sounds of their bodies.

Nothing but the fragile little noise she let out as he plunged back into her. A gasp. A cry. Something in the middle. She'd tried to stifle it - it was cut short at the end, muffled by his shoulder.

He raised his head, brow furrowing, and stopped, still buried inside her. She hadn't been particularly...delicate, the last time. The act didn't seem to hurt her. But perhaps he'd been too bold. Perhaps he'd moved too quickly. Perhaps he'd rubbed against something deep inside her that caused her to retreat…

He looked down, searching her face. Her eyes were closed, long lashes kissing the very crest of her cheek. Her lips -  _her lips, her lips, always her lips_  - were open and wet and full. Her throat was flushed and her chest was pink, and her face contorted in pleasure as he twitched inside her, and she fluttered around him.

She was...lovely.

Unbearably lovely, in the low lights, in the spill of shadows. His lungs seized as he watched her. If it weren't for her trembling muscles, and her breasts pressed flush to his chest, and her legs locked around his, anchoring him to her, he wouldn't have believed the sight of her beneath him.

"Deeper," she breathed, her eyes squeezed shut, her tongue darting across her lips.

It was no performance, this time. Her words were not carefully crafted to arouse him. Her fingers dug into him, and her back arched as he thrust into her again,  _deeper,_  following her single command. She tossed her head to the side, baring her soft white neck. A trail of freckles swept across her shoulder...too many to count. He wanted to touch each and every one, to memorize the pattern of them, the way they scattered across her body…

Steadying himself above her, he reached out, touching her face. He guided her back towards him, and her eyes fluttered open, dazed and half-lidded as she looked up.

He leaned down, pressing his forehead to hers. Her mouth was  _so close_  to his...painfully so. A hair's breadth away. Her breath brushed his face, slipped between his lips as he inhaled, filled his lungs and swirled out again. She bowed beneath him, wrapping herself tighter around him, urging him on with each roll of her hips, with each little gasp that shivered in the air between them.

One of her hands fell to her side, fisting the sheets, fingers clenching in the fabric. The other moved across his back, up his neck, stopping at his nape. She held him there, pressing him closer to her, holding his face near hers.

 _Imagine,_ he'd told her.  _Trick your body._

He tried not to think of that now. He didn't want to know what she saw... _who_ she saw...as her eyes closed again. As she moaned quietly, and she yielded to the heat between them, every inch of her body reacting as he drove into her, and pulled back, and plunged still deeper towards her warm, wet center. Over and over again.

Her hand trailed back down his spine, settling against his waist. Her fingers dug into the skin there, holding tight.

He could feel himself getting very close. Slower than last time, and softer, perhaps - a gradual build from his core, growing stronger as her slick muscles clenched against him, as her gentle warmth pulled at him. She throbbed around him, and her breath came in quick, short pants, and she tilted her face up to him, her lips trembling just beneath his...near enough to claim her mouth, to kiss her breathless as she rocked with him, matching the steady rhythm of his hips, working him closer and closer to the edge…

"Are you going to come in me?" she whispered.

He inhaled sharply. " _Yes_ ," he said, and his voice was so desperate, so thin, not his own. She pressed her nose to his and her hand held the back of his head, feeling his sweat-soaked hair, pulling him deeper and deeper into her.

She was so close…her mouth was so close to his, nothing between them, nothing stopping them from...

She swallowed thickly, and he swore he could feel it as she bit her bottom lip. Her eyes were screwed shut so tightly, and her thighs were around his hips, squeezing, her heels trying to find purchase on him. "Tell me," she panted.

His heart thundered in his chest. "I'm going to come in you," he said, the breath of those strange words on her parted lips. The pressure in his cock, in his groin, in his throbbing, tightening sack, became unbearable.

"Tell me," she said again, one of her hands snaking up to brace herself on the headboard. She arched to meet his thrusts, urged him to fuck her harder. She twisted, spasmed under his weight, under his driving hips. She groaned and quivered so beautifully for him.

He watched, transfixed, wanting to remember her just like this - the way she moved in her heat, in her possession, in the trance that held them both. He was inescapably bewitched.

"I'm going to come in you…" His voice was deeper, stronger, coming from somewhere secret and rooted in him. He was lightheaded with it. "I'm going to fill you up."

She whimpered and her fingers tightened in his hair. Her hips yawned and rolled with his; their steady thrusting devolved to an instinctual, agonizing grind. He knew neither of them was in control now. Their slickened skin slipped, his open mouth nearly grazing hers, droplets of his sweat wetting her face. He pressed his cheek to hers and let her feel how his jaw clenched, how his teeth gnashed together…he let her feel what she'd driven him to. Under him, she writhed.

"No…" she moaned, plaintive and weak. But her body held him fast, her feet climbing up the his taut thighs, up to the dimples in his lower back, her hand tangled in his hair, pulling so hard it nearly hurt his scalp…he couldn't have stopped if he'd wanted to. "Please," she begged deliriously between her labored breaths. "Please…no…"

"I'm going to put my child in you, Claire," he growled, his lips against her ear. The wet, forbidden sounds of their bodies meeting, over and over, echoed around them in the sweltering, oppressive air. "You make me so hard...I have so much come for you," he murmured, feeling her shiver uncontrollably in his embrace. She bore down so that he could barely move to thrust into her. "Open up for me…let me make you pregnant—"

His breath caught on the last word.

Four, full aching pulses. He pumped into her once more, struggling for air, for relief.

"I feel you…I can feel you coming," she sobbed, her hands slipping across his wet back.

The horrible, wonderful pressure finally released. His body tensed, bending over her, around her, wracked with tremors. He twitched inside her, his face still pressed to hers, buried in the wild river of hair that swept across her pillow.

_It was done._

He wanted, more than anything, to stay exactly where he was. He wanted to revel in the way every inch of his skin touched hers, the way their heaving breaths were nearly synchronized. He wanted to reach down between her legs, and try,  _try_ to bring her some fraction of the bliss she'd given him, and watch her truly lose herself, hear her cry out for him in the dark…

He took a gulping, shivering breath. He tensed his arms, ready to push away from her.

"Wait," she whispered, her mouth brushing his ear. "Just...just a second…"

At her request, he stayed in her, on top of her, his weight on his tired arms so he didn't crush her beneath him. They breathed together, listened to each other in the near-dark. She held him,  _clung_  to him, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. With his nose in her damp hair, he inhaled deeply, greedily, wanting to trap her very essence in his lungs.

_How had this happened? How had any of this happened?_

"Claire…" He said her name against the creamy skin of her throat.

"Not yet," she said. She must have sensed him detaching, moving from her, growing soft inside of her. Her embrace of his body tightened. He heard desperation in her voice. Heard the spiderweb cracks in her words.

"Okay," he whispered. "Alright."

They held one another until she stopped crying.

* * *

The bathroom faucet squeaked as he turned it on. She heard water rushing into the sink. Heard it dripping from a rag as he wrung it out.

She sighed, shifting her hips on the pillow. Twenty minutes until she could stand up and shower…again. Or maybe fifteen now. She'd hadn't remembered to check the clock.

She felt sticky. Sweaty. Her hair was matted against the pillow. The sheets were damp beneath her, clinging to her skin.

It was...strange. Listening to him clean himself up in the other room. She could still feel him - she was swollen and tightly strung, muscles slowly unwinding in the aftermath of what they'd done.

She wondered, briefly, if he had felt her crying. If he knew. But she couldn't let herself linger on the thought too long...or else she might be reduced to burning, humiliating tears again.

She frowned, raising a hand to her stomach. She'd let herself get swept away _._ Just like he wanted, she was sure. And for a few moments, lost with him, she'd let herself forget the black, bitter truth at the core of things.

They were all here for him to use.

One after the other. A box of tissues.

So he'd been gentle with her...twice, now. So he'd made her body feel things it hadn't felt in years. So he'd whispered exactly what she wanted to hear in her ear, and she'd felt like his hands were undoing all that was tangled and hurting inside of her, knot by knot.

He was still Albert Wesker. The world had still ended in screams and blood and scorching flames...at the hands of monsters like him.

Hands that had been on her.

Hands that she'd  _invited_ to touch her.

She stared at the bathroom door, thinking of Jill. The way she sat quietly by the waves, empty and pale as a ghost. The same girl who used to be strong and sure and steady.

A person who'd never really been  _friendly,_ never been  _warm,_ but had a nice smile, and had sharp eyes, and had a laugh that was more breath than voice. Who hovered in the corners of rooms and plucked out snippets of songs on the piano between drinks.

A person who'd had a funeral under bright, sunny skies. Who'd died. Disappeared. Come back to something that wasn't quite life. Wasn't quite herself.

He'd  _destroyed_  that Jill Valentine.

And even though Claire knew it...she'd seen it, they'd all seen it...she'd spent the last hour with him. Writhing and whimpering for him.

He was still Albert Wesker. His hands had been soft, but he could still tear a person to shreds.

He emerged from the bathroom with a wet green washcloth. She stared at him over her elevated hips, her bony knees. He stopped to turn off the low track lights. The room was dark for a moment before her vision adjusted. She saw his eyes first - glowing like warm amber.

"Be careful that you don't -" he started, as he approached the side of the bed.

"I know. I won't touch your come, don't worry." She took the washcloth from him and gingerly wiped her mons, her thighs. She glanced up; he was watching… _closely_. "Do you mind?" she asked.

He smiled, turning away. "Right. Apologies."

She sighed and peered between her legs, running the cool wet cloth over the very sides of her puffy labia. "What if it doesn't take?"

He was silent for a moment. "The child, you mean?"

"Yeah." She rolled her eyes. "The  _child_."

"I don't see why it wouldn't." He sounded thoughtful. "I suppose we should reevaluate our progress in two weeks time."

"Great," she answered flatly. "I'll pencil you in." She dropped the washcloth to the floor.

"Is something terribly wrong  _again_ , Claire?" He picked up the used hand towel, walked it to her laundry basket. "You're markedly different than you were…about three minutes ago."

There was an edge to his voice. She recognized it immediately - a mocking, almost snide tone.

She settled back against the pillows. She glared, biting down on the side of her tongue.

_He'd destroyed Jill Valentine. There was no reason he wouldn't try destroy her, too._

"I just hope that you were…as kind to Jill, as you were to me. Tonight." Her words trembled.

He turned to her then, squinting. "Jill? What does Jill have to do with…any of this?"

"Because I can't stop thinking about what you did to her." She swallowed. "It makes me fucking sick."

He glared at her. "She  _told_  you about that?"

"Christ, she didn't have to." She sneered, her lip curling away from her teeth. "Look at her."

"I'm not sure where this... _attack_  is coming from." He crossed his arms, his expression settling back into  _condescension_. His words were clipped to fine points. "But I assure you, whatever I  _did_ with her is completely irrelevant now."

" _Irrelevant?_ Are you insane?" She gripped the sheet, twisting towards him. " _Look at her!_ You can see it in her fucking eyes! The shit you did to her...it's...it's fucking sick! I don't know what the hell you'd get out of -"

"I saved her life!" he yelled, his serene facade shattering.

Claire flinched, sinking back against the pillows. He rounded on her - a flicker of the thing he used to be, eyes flaring angry in the dark.

" _I_ saved her life." He thumped his chest, once, stepping towards the bed as she shifted away. He spoke through clenched teeth. " _I_  did. After your goddamned brother led her to me, and then left her behind to die…"

She  _raged_ at the mention of Chris. "At least he didn't  _rape_ her!"

Wesker's face dropped. He stopped, mid-step, hand falling limply to his side. "Rape?"

"I guess it's easy to forget that part, yeah? Between all the viruses and the mind control shit?" She turned her face away, jaw grinding, trying to ignore the dull ache between her legs. "Details get a little fuzzy when you've got that much going on."

He was quiet; she could hear him breathing.

"I am many things, Miss Redfield," he said, low and steady, struggling to control his words. "But I am not a rapist."

"Right. Yeah. Why don't we—"

"December 21st, 1997."

She paused. "What?"

"You're so  _curious_  about my dalliances with Jill Valentine. December 21st, 1997. The first, and only time I…engaged with her."

She stared at him, her eyes narrow and dark.

"It was the evening of the company Christmas party. There was no coercion, no alcohol involved - although your beloved brother was very much drunk, per usual." He took a deep breath and began reciting the events coldly, as if reading from a log. "We had sex in her bed. It was snowing that night. I stayed with her, afterwards, if my memory serves me. And as far as I know… she honored our little secret for nearly twelve years."

Claire licked her bottom lip, chewed at it. She hesitated. "You didn't…you didn't rape her? When she was…"

"That was the last time I…shared  _anything_  of myself, with anyone. Until you." He bent down to pick up his boxers. She watched as he stepped into them - right leg, left leg. "Think what you want, though. It makes no difference to me."

She suddenly felt very naked. The villa was stiflingly small and cavernously empty all at once. He seemed very far away as he bent to gather his clothes.

She studied him, the moonlight and shadows on his muscled shoulders. He turned his profile to her, his hair shining like silver, falling over his eyes. It was so long - she'd never noticed, never thought about it, never considered what it might look like without polish and lacquer. Long, bone-straight, and very white. She felt as if she was seeing it for the first time.

She hated herself for it.

"I'm…" She swallowed, watching as he fastened his shorts, his eyes locked firmly on his hands. "I didn't mean…"

"Of course not." His voice was dismissive, terse. "You never mean it, do you, Claire?" He worked his arms through his shirt, pulling it over his head, smoothing the fabric down.

She started to sit up, pushing herself onto her elbows.

"I don't believe it's time for you to move yet." There was no more edge to his words. No venom. Just a kind of dull resignation. He stared beyond her as he spoke, out the darkened windows. He seemed vacant, tightening the threads he'd loosened only moments ago.

She'd hurt him.

She'd actually  _hurt_ him.

She stared at him, grasping for something to say. Everything slipped through her fingers, tumbling to the floor.

He glanced around the room, as if he were checking for anything he'd forgotten. His shoulders rose and fell with a heavy breath. "We'll assess things in two weeks. Sleep well."

He crossed her villa in quick, long strides.

He opened her door and stepped out into the humid night air, before shutting it softly behind him.

And in spite of everything...in spite of all the care and the softness and the gentle touches, in spite of their bodies fitting so beautifully into each other, in spite of their resolve to try  _something different..._ she was back to where she was a month ago, on a horrible morning.

Hips on a pillow. Breath high and tight in her chest. A lump in her throat as she stared up at the gauzy canopy.

And like it did before, twenty minutes lasted twenty lifetimes.


	6. Lords and Serfs

 

* * *

 " _I wept not, so to stone within I grew."  
-Dante Alighieri_  

* * *

Something had changed.

He could smell it in the air.

He smelled it in the late afternoon, under the wild red sun. Everyone was gathered on the main deck near the villas, divvying up the tasks that would keep them busy until dinner. There were shellfish to clean, stores to inventory, food to can and laundry to wash and brush piles to move. Endless work.

He hadn't imagined - foolishly - that the New World would have been so back-breaking. So  _dull._

Claire stood in front of him, attention on Chris as he rattled through the afternoon's list. She'd showered, after another day spent toiling in the soon-to-be garden. She fidgeted impatiently, the sun beating down on her, her hair still shining damp beneath it.

Chris sighed, looking down at the list in his hand. "Somebody's gotta go through the dry stuff...see if anything else has those bugs in it. Leon? Claire?"

"Sure," Leon answered. And Claire nodded.

She turned, ready to follow him up towards the kitchen. And there was no warm breeze, nothing soft to carry the scent towards him...but he caught it.

It was hidden beneath the apple, and the ginger, and the blossoming trees, and the thousand other little smells that tangled together around her.

Something new. Something... _deep._ A different, distinct layer to her.

"Don't throw the other stuff out!" Rebecca called after them. "We can still eat it!"

"Oh my  _god."_ Sherry pulled a face. "I'm not eating  _insects._ That's the line. That's it."

"They're just protein…"

He frowned, eyes locked on the splintering wood beneath him, trying to focus past their banter. She smelled... _richer._ Fuller. It faded as she walked away, carried off towards the sea and the forest and the distant resort.

But it was there. He held it in his lungs, in his mouth, all honeyed and amber and unsettlingly  _warm._

Unsettlingly familiar.

 _Part of him._ He set his jaw tighter.  _Part of him and part of her._

The pregnancy had taken.

He looked up. She had turned to Leon. She was saying something. She tugged at one leg of her shorts, adjusting the hem against her thigh as she followed the path towards the kitchens.

He watched her, and his mouth felt very dry.

It was a success. His great  _scheme._ The only reason he was here. The only reason any of them were here.

After months of struggle, of choices that weighed on him like lead, his bones bending beneath them...after months spent wiping away the ash and dust of what he'd built, trying to find something whole in the wreckage...after months of weaning himself off the serum, changing and softening and  _weakening,_ feeling the virus coil and writhe in his blood as his increasingly  _human_ body warred with it...

...it was finally a success.

And all he could feel, as she disappeared around the bend, was the hollow, needle-sharp question:  _what now?_

"Somebody also needs to go check the nets," Chris was saying, restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "Volunteers?"

Jill halfheartedly raised her hand. Wesker nodded once, absently. Anything to get away from the group.

To get away and be alone and  _think._

Because he had known the answer to  _what now._ He had known  _what now_ months ago, when Chris had begged for all their sorry lives.

He had known  _what now_ on the ship, when he'd walked between the cryogenic chambers, monitoring the fluttering pulses and shallow breaths of the bodies inside them.

He had known  _what now_ when she'd mounted him on his bed, her face set with a steely sort of determination, both of them resigned and reluctant.

He had known it with a cutting kind of clarity. He had known it like the steady pull of a compass.

He had known it until he'd been on top of her, inside of her again, their lips inches away from one another. Until he'd felt her frail, desperate breath in his mouth.

After that...it was as if he'd forgotten everything.

"Okay." Chris patted the pockets of his shorts, as though he were checking for something, the way he might have before work in the Old World. "Let's meet back at dinner."

The others murmured in agreement, spreading out, scattering in the direction of their various assignments. Jill looked at him - icy and hollow-eyed - and waited for him to move.

He took a deep breath, all rasping salty air, and started down the pier. Down towards the little spit of shore where the fishing nets were anchored.

 _The pregnancy had taken._ He told himself again and again, as he walked, Jill trailing like a silent specter behind him.  _It had taken._

His grand, sweeping vision may have crumbled in the dry brush of Africa, but this had not. Claire Redfield was carrying his child. She would carry it for the next nine months. He would see her grow and see her change, all from a safe distance...away from the strange, primal spell she cast over his body...and this was only the first step, the first of many, and she was only a pawn on the chessboard that seemed to sprawl endlessly before him...

He curled his fingers to a fist, nails biting into the heel of his hand.

He  _knew_  success. He knew the rush and burn of it when it first blossomed. He knew it when it faded to a dull simmer beneath his skin. He knew how tasted, how it felt, what it weighed in his palm.

This was nothing like it.

* * *

_**May 11, 2009** _

The coffee tasted stale.

He sipped it quietly, sitting in the ship's cabin. All around him, metal groaned and settled, battered by churning waves.

Seven days without Jill.

Putting her to sleep had been the right choice. The  _only_ choice. She'd grown weak. She'd grown frail. She'd shriveled up before his eyes, pale and parched, a withered vine in the too-hot sun

But still, he...missed her.

He took another sip of the coffee, grimacing. He thought of the creamer in the kitchen - dry and dusty, with a sour taste.

Everything tasted wrong.

Everything felt wrong.

Everything  _was_ wrong.

 _Years of planning._  He stared down at the tepid brown liquid.  _Years of work._

The dismantling of Umbrella. The calculated H.C.F strikes. The acquisition of asset after asset...pandering to black market brokers, chipping away at Tricell's pristine facade, leaving a trail of ash and blood behind him.

He'd done more than  _sell his soul._  He'd torn his soul to shreds. He'd unraveled himself. He'd cut himself to the bone, fighting for...

...this.

For one hundred and twenty-three of the infected. For a handful of reluctant survivors. For an empty, sprawling ocean in a desolate world.

For a black cat that peered at him from the armchair in the corner.

He'd failed.

That was the plain, stark truth of it. That was the word that tasted as bitter as the coffee, and clung to his lips, to his tongue, to every inch of him, black and slick.

 _Perhaps something could be salvaged._ The sharp, sure voice, the one that had worked to build all of this, grasped at threads.  _The plan...the bargain with Redfield, the survivors slumbering below...it was all still in motion..._

He ran his fingertip around the rim of the mug.

 _Rebuild,_ the voice told him.  _Rebuild and reclaim and rise._

But a part of him - a small, flickering thing, just a whisper - wanted to  _rest._

He envied the others. Their peaceful oblivion. Over the past seven days, the world had taken its final shaking, struggling gasp. And he had been, perhaps, the only witness.

He tapped his finger against the side of the ceramic cup.

He leaned back in the chair, listening to it creak beneath him.

And he felt the weight of all this  _emptiness_ pressing in around him, smothering him like a heavy, damp rag.

All this… _loneliness._

He hated the word. The feeling. Weak and useless and utterly, disgustingly  _human._

Pathetic.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a blur of movement. The cat's tail disappeared through the cracked door, out into the hallway.

He sighed, shaking out of his self-pity. He pushed away from the desk, and strode across the room, wrenching the door open.

The hall was empty. He took a breath, ready to call the animal back…

 _He didn't know its damned name._  He glowered at the dark metal walls, the flickering lights, the sloping, spreading shadows beckoning further down the ship's interior.

"...cat?" he tried. His voice echoed off the steel.

Nothing moved.

He leaned against the frame, cool metal pressed against his temple. It had been a mistake, bringing it with them. It was too clever for its own good. But it had stared at him, with those great golden eyes, as he'd hoisted its master up none too gently, her head rolling back on her shoulders, her wild mess of hair clinging to anything and everything...as Jill had sworn under breath from the other room, and something had fallen to the floor with a loud clatter...as he'd looked around the little apartment one last time, scanning for anything they might have missed…

 _Fine,_ he'd told it, watching it flick its tail expectantly.

Now he squinted down the long corridor, searching for any sign of life.

Its name would be something... _insipid._  Something more humiliating than the poor creature deserved.  _Inky_ or  _Jinx_ or  _Whiskers._

He couldn't bring himself to try any of them.

He stepped out into the hall. The air was eerily still.

He'd go to the kitchens and dig out the last of the salmon roe. It seemed particularly fond of that. It was excessive, yes, but he felt sorry for the little beast - all alone on the wide, dark ocean, at the end of the world. Nothing familiar or comforting around it.

No home. No family. No name.

He walked slowly, turning corner after dim, shadowed corner, and tried not to wonder if it felt the same about him.

* * *

Jill gripped the rope, tugging with all of her might.

He watched from the corner of his eye. She had been strong once...not long ago. She'd been sculpted to near-perfection beneath the exacting hammer and chisel of the P30. At times, she'd been nearly as fast and sleek and sure as him.

Now she took a deep breath, frowning - one of the few times he saw her features change - and tightened her hold on the rope, struggling to pull the damp netting closer to the shore.

"Let me," he said, dropping his own length of rope in the sand. She glared out over the blue-grey water, her eyes steely and focused. She shook her head.

He sighed, watching as she pulled again. The setting sun bore down on them both, and he ran his tongue along his bottom lip, tasting sweat. "Jill…"

"No," she said. It was a coarse, cracking word. Her shoulders rolled as she tugged at the rope, dragging the net inch by inch. Her muscles flexed and rippled, and the scars on her chest showed clearly in the early evening light, the skin there straining with each movement.

They were...healing well. As well as could be expected. She'd always have that angry red ring - it would always be just above her heart, as if she'd been branded.

Years from now, she would still see those faint marks, and remember the cold metal, the needles digging into her thin skin and quivering muscles, the weight of the shining red scarab resting against her breastbone.

Years from now, she would still know he'd put them there.

He stared at her. At her dark gold hair and her waxen skin. At the heavy circles beneath her eyes. A thousand things had changed since December 21st, 1997. She'd been so  _sure_ of herself that evening, wearing simple black pants and a pale blue sweater. She'd leaned against the wall beside him, swirling an olive through her martini. She'd tucked a short strand of chestnut hair behind her ear as she looked out over the party, shaking her head at some off-color comment Chris had made.

 _I hate these things,_ she'd told him, with a little ghost of a smile in the corner of her lips. A teasing, flirting thing. She'd bitten one Spanish olive off a toothpick, and handed him the one that was left.

It had been a rare thing, to want to touch someone else, to want to feel himself  _inside_  of them - even then, before the infection. And so he played along and followed her home.

She'd been vibrant. Full of life and breath and  _fight._ And now...everything he touched...everything he had ever touched...it all ended up broken, bruised, blackened beyond recognition...

Now, she clenched her teeth as he watched her struggle. The surf broke, and the breeze rustled the scrubby brush, and her breath came in short, labored huffs.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered, watching the net bobbing uselessly in the shallows. He walked towards her, arm outstretched. "Move-"

His own breath caught as a sharp, sudden pain tore through him. It surged through his chest, his muscles seizing, ripping the air from his lungs.

He stumbled in the damp sand as it radiated out, and up, and down, burning along the length of his spine, throbbing in his temples. The world faded grey and dim, shrinking to the point of a pin.

_Not now._

_Not now. Not again. Not here._

He curled his hand to a fist, fighting the urge to double over. He inhaled sharply through his nose, desperately pushing back the rising wave of nausea that accompanied these... _fits._

It would pass. If he stayed very still, and kept breathing, and focused - just focused - it would pass...it always passed...

Through the haze of pain and sickness, he felt Jill's eyes on him. Piercing, icy blue.

He took a great, gulping breath, trying to find his voice and tell her it was nothing. To get back to work. He raised his arm, trying to wave her off. The movement sent him pitching forward, and he sank to one knee, panting as another spasm wrenched through him.

She was a shadow in the corner of his eye as she walked forward. She stopped beside him - didn't kneel, didn't reach out. Just stood, watching, and waiting.

The episodes had come on slowly at first. Quick, aching twinges in his joints. Tremors in his muscles. A vague unsettledness in his stomach, or the slightest edge of a fever creeping over him in the middle of the night.

He'd known the cessation of the serum would have unpleasant side effects, as the virus adapted to its newer - and far weaker - environment. He'd anticipated all the old symptoms - increased sensitivity, bone-deep exhaustion, unexplained pains. Things he kept to himself, in the dim lights of his own villa, as he tossed beneath the sheets late into the night, or stood in the shower with scalding water rushing over his shoulders.

They had come on slowly, but they were growing more and more frequent.

And they were growing stronger.

He could hear Jill breathing. He could hear it as loudly as if he were in the midst of a hurricane, wind roaring around him. Air swirled through her lungs, and the blur of the sea crashed against the shoreline, and each grain of sand scratched together like metal carving through a pane of glass.

He bit down hard, jaw grinding, swallowing the noise that rose in his throat as he pushed himself up off the ground. The sun was nearly gone, but the air still felt boiling hot, and left him reeling, gasping for breath.

He staggered a little as he stood upright. The world wavered, colors and shapes shifting, sharp noises growing and fading - and then it snapped into clarity all at once, fog lifting all around him. He blinked, flexing his hands. His fingers felt numb and bloodless.

He exhaled shakily. He raised a hand to his temple, still pounding dully. His fingertips came away damp with sweat.

And all the while, Jill watched. She was as distant and detached as she'd been when he first awakened her. Mute, with her face as blank as a mask.

"It's nothing," he said, answering the question she hadn't asked. His mouth felt dry and his tongue felt heavy. He stared at the coil of rope he'd dropped in the sand. "Leave this...for now. The others are waiting."

She tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. "You'll die soon if you don't take it," she said, hard and even.

"Shut up," he growled.

"No one will care." She stared at him. "No one will notice."

 _No one will notice._  A fate worse than death.

"Unless you mutate," she said, her voice as monotonous as his.

"Shut up!" The force of his own words sent him nearly to blacking out again. He stumbled before collapsing to hands and knees.

He stayed there, his fingers sifting through beautiful white sand. He pressed his face to the beach, felt the grains digging into his skin, felt them move with his breath. He closed his eyes.

"Get up."

He licked his lips, sand on his tongue.

"Get up, Wesker."

He had said the same thing to her once. Years ago. A lifetime ago. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself to kneeling. His head lolled back and the dying sun washed over him.

"Is this…what it is to be human?" he asked, out into the air. To her…to the sky…perhaps to god. To anything that would know the answer.

She came to stand in front of him. He looked up into her impassive face. She reached out and brushed his forehead, brushed his eyebrows, where the fine grains of sand clung to him. He could only close his eyes and let her.

"I'd rather be dead than this."

"You will be soon," she repeated. "Take the serum."

"I can't. It's not finished…I'm not finished," he whispered.

"Then die." Her answer was quiet, and it faded quickly as she turned to walk back towards the resort.

* * *

_**May 11, 2009** _

He found the cat on the bridge.

The windows looked out over the moonlit sea. The sky was black, bleeding into the dark water. All around him, monitors flickered and gauges pulsed, as the ship held steady on its course towards the shadowy horizon.

The cat had wedged itself beneath one of the counters, curled into a corner. It blinked up at him when he entered the room.

He sighed, pulling out one of the chairs, sinking into it. He worked the top off the little jar of salmon roe. As the seal popped free, the cat lifted its head, watching expectantly.

"Here." He scooped a spoonful of the bright, glistening eggs onto a little white saucer, setting it down beside the chair.

The cat padded forward cautiously, examining the plate.

"Go on," he urged, tipping his chin towards the roe. "You've had it before. You like it."

The cat sniffed at the little orange orbs, taking a delicate bite. And then another.

"Enjoy." Wesker leaned back, arms crossed over his chest. He turned the chair towards the windows, and stared into the black night with unfocused eyes. "We might as well treat ourselves while we're out here, don't you think?"

The cat, of course, failed to answer.

 _The cat. The cat, the cat._ The little beast desperately needed a name. It was the only living thing on the ship that could stand to be around him. And now, with Jill gone, with miles of rolling waves between the ship and their destination, with no one else for company…it might be the only thing to keep him from going mad with loneliness.

His eyes drifted towards the VHF radio mounted beside him. It had sat useless and silent for weeks. The screen had glowed an unwavering shade of orange, as bright as hot embers.

Not even a flicker of life from it.

He reached for the transmitter. He held it up to his mouth, taking a breath, then frowning.

He knew how to hail properly. How to keep the conversation short and direct. How to give orders, ask questions, keep his words cut tight and efficient.

But as he sat on the dark bridge, floating on the dead empty sea, miles away from the dead empty land, listening to the saucer scrape against the floor as the cat licked the edges…

"Are you there?" he asked.

It was all he could think to ask.

His own voice echoed hollowly around him. Static buzzed and hummed…and he waited.

He leaned back, the transmitter still gripped tightly in his hand, closing his eyes.  _It had been weeks,_ he reminded himself.  _Weeks, and he hadn't heard anything. He should have kept on top of her. He should have tracked her down when he had the chance. She would have come with them. She wasn't foolish...she was a thousand grating, terrible things, more than a simple thorn in his side, but never foolish...she would have come...and now…_

"You're lucky." His eyes flew open at the words, and he lurched towards the receiver, reaching for the volume, twisting the dial as far as it would go. "I usually don't answer when a man waits this long to call me."

Her voice was low - a bit rougher than usual, spiking and crackling with the feedback from the radio. But thicker, too. Gravelly. She sounded exhausted.

She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

He'd never known Ada Wong to crack before.

He leaned forward, both elbows on the desk. He swallowed heavily, the transmitter hovering near his lips. It had only been seven days since he'd heard a voice besides his own, but sitting here now, the week seemed to stretch endlessly behind him.

"How are you?" he finally asked. He sounded unusually hoarse himself. "Where are you?"

"Can't complain." The receiver clicked and popped, swallowing her words. "-stopping outside Bangkok."

"Are you safe?"

She was silent. She was silent for so long that he worried the channel might have gone dead. That he'd been given a few moments of relief from the gnawing silence, only to be thrust back into it again...

"I'm not dead yet," she said at last. A half-answer. Empty and wilted.

He looked out into the night. Little droplets of saltwater on the glass obscured the horizon. "Can you hold out a bit longer?"

"I'll try," she said through the static. "I'll try."

* * *

The evening was heavy with noise. Bugs hummed and chirped and buzzed. Waves roared as a storm roiled on the horizon.

While the world around them was full of life and sound, the group was bitterly silent. Nothing but cutlery clattering and chairs creaking as they ate.

Wesker picked a pulpy seed from a blush-pink chunk of fruit. As unusually tense as they all seemed, the quietness was a blessing. The pounding of his heart had faded an hour ago, leaving an excruciating headache in its wake. He felt sore. He felt stiff.

He felt utterly -  _pathetically_  - exhausted.

Across from him, Moira flicked a discarded shrimp tail to the edge of her plate, sighing heavily. "Is there anything else to eat?"

Barry glanced down the table. "There's more-"

"Besides fucking  _fish,"_ she snapped over him, eyes narrowing into a glare.

"Moira…" The man's voice was low. He rubbed his palm across his tired face, shoulders slumping in anticipation of yet another argument.

Just down from their bickering, Sherry tapped the blade of her dinner knife against the edge of her plate in a staccato rhythm. She rested her elbow on the table, chin cradled in her palm. Josh cleared his throat, asking someone to pass the pitcher of water. Leon plucked a thin fishbone from his mouth.

The wet heat of the day hadn't worn off, even as the sky grew dark and purple. The humidity was relentless, the very air they breathed seeming to suffocate them. Wesker's shirt clung to his back. It had been uncomfortably damp as soon as he'd pulled it on before dinner, and his body regulated itself better than any of theirs. He knew they were all sweating and miserable.

Chris stared out over the group from his seat at the head of the table. His thick fingers played with the tines of a fork, his heavily-muscled forearm flexed under the low light. Moths fluttered around chandelier at the very top of the gazebo; Wesker could hear their soft bodies whispering against the double-pane glass.

"I have something I wanna say," Chris said, his voice low. He twisted the metal cap off another bottle of  _Vonu_. "To everyone."

Wesker rubbed his nose, counting the collection of bottles around the illustrious, hulking leader they'd elected.

Chris downed the beer in about three gulps.

 _Oh, how they'd elected such a terrible mistake._ Kennedy would have been better suited to the task - second to himself, of course. But who was he to convince them. He'd watch them let Chris run the community into the ground and then he'd calmly take over. They'd be incredibly grateful; he'd be incredibly humble. Things would fall into their natural order in time.

Chris reclined, his steely gaze drifting down the gathered, tired faces. His eyes, strangely resolute for the amount of alcohol in his system, settled on Wesker, at the other end of the long, formal table.

Wesker sighed.

"I know you all blame me," Chris started. "For all this. I get it. I fuckin' get it."

"Don't," Claire warned. "You're drunk. We're exhausted."

"And you're right. There was monster," he continued, his upper lip curling. "I should have killed a long time ago."

Wesker rolled his eyes.  _Such a flare for the dramatic._  He had never realized...never imagined...that Redfield could be so theatrical.

"But he grew…and he grew…until it looked like he was too big to kill."

Wesker tilted his head, the corners of his mouth tugging and resisting a smile.

"When he finally took everything from me…beat me half to death…had me on my fucking knees…" Chris put two fingers to his temple, his hand the shape of a gun. "He said,  _I am a merciful god_."

Sheva stood up, the feet of her chair stuttering across the floor, and she stormed away from the gazebo and the moths and the memory. The rest of them stared at their empty plates, and their still feet, and their useless hands - some flat on the table, some balled into fists.

"He told me to make a list. Of the people I love. I had to choose…slavery…or death. And I chose life."

"Chris, not tonight," Claire warned again.

"No one knows… _none_ of you know...what the fuck it's like. To have to make that choice." Chris ignored his sister. "He said,  _I am such a benevolent god that_  -"

" _I will save your people because you cannot_ ," Wesker finished. They stared at each other. Wind whipped the gauzy curtains and night birds called in the forest. "Which I did. You're all very much alive, because of me."

"But your big scheme failed." Chris grinned bitterly.

"Is there a point you'd like to make here?" Wesker asked, waving his hand dismissively.

"Oh yeah…there's a point." Chris glared. "You're not a god… you're barely even a monster now, huh?"

Wesker held his gaze, unblinking. "Is that…some sort of threat?"

Chris smiled and Wesker felt them all looking at him, their eyes boring into him, through him, where he sat. "It might be."

Wesker laughed under his breath. "I have the strength of twenty of you." He looked from face to face. "On my  _worst_  day."

"Why the fuck should any of us listen to you anymore, you piece of shit?" Chris bellowed, rushing to his feet. "You lost!"

Wesker didn't rise. "Because I will take my ship…and leave you all here to rot on Pleasure Island. Would you like that? Would that make you feel better? Tell me,  _Chris_ … what happens when you run out of beer?"

Chris sneered at him. "I swear to god, you fuckin'-"

"Do you know anything about feudalism?" Claire asked loudly, interrupting them. Wesker's narrowed eyes darted to her.

He had been taking great pains to ignore her entirely. As  _entirely_ as he could manage, when she was as bright and sharp as the goddamned sun at noon. When her voice was loud and her words were cutting. When her scent had changed to something whole and full, something that called to him like a flaring beacon.

"Oh please, Miss Redfield. Educate me." He sat back in his chair.

She ignored the bite in his words. "At the top, there's the lord, right?"

Wesker's knee bounced, out of sight, under the table. His brow furrowed.

"And under him… there's a bunch of serfs." She pushed her plate away, the half-eaten fish seeming to suddenly disgust her. She draped her napkin over the pile of pale flesh and silvery skin. "We're the serfs, aren't we?"

He took a deep breath. "If you were the  _serfs_ ," he mocked, "and I was the lord, in this metaphor...what about it?"

"The serfs belonged to the land and worked it. Without them, the lord would starve."

"You're forgetting, Claire, in your little analogy, that without the lord's protection, the serfs would be overrun by barbarians," he said in the most belittling tone he could manage. He fought to keep from wincing at his own words.

"Pretty much," she agreed. She kept her face neutral, holding his gaze.

"Well. What a mind for strategy you have, Miss Redfield," he laughed. "I'm surrounded by geniuses. I simply cannot spit without hitting a-"

"We need each other, Wesker."

He stared at her, silenced. His thoughts raced with biting retorts, vehement denials, vicious insults. He didn't need  _them_ , these idiots, these freeloaders…but the way she had said it, the conviction in her voice, the deep blue fire in her eyes...

It was as if she was speaking only to him. It was a confession. It was a white flag.

It was an apology.

"You need our bodies. All of them. And we'll need yours…when those monsters come here." She looked at her friends, looked at her brother. "And they will come here. It's just a matter of time."

* * *

She crawled into bed at nine.

After another hellish day in the sun, she was spent. Exhausted in a way she had never been. Every muscle was tight with pain, and she could still feel the cruel heat and glaring light on her face. It was like standing too close to a fire.

She sank into the cool pillow, the cool sheets, her body relaxing muscle by muscle. As inviting as the bed was, a new torture awaited her here -  _aloneness._

It crept up on her every time she stopped to catch her breath. Every time she was still for a moment. Every second spent away from the daily toil was an opportunity for her mind to race and whir.

He'd hardly looked in her direction since that night. And when he did, it was ice cold, untouchably distant. He'd sneered at her. He'd mocked her.

How could he be so near and so far at the same time? How could he work side by side with her, and not feel a thing, say a thing? His face, his body, his manner were all a perfect mask of indifference.

She hadn't expected him to change, really. She hadn't expected him to be kind or grateful or  _warm_  to her, after the way they'd ended things that night, no...

Or had she?

How could she be so stupid?

_But how could he turn everything off?_

She buried her face in her pillow. She'd lost herself with him in these fine Egyptian linens before. Now they felt like sandpaper against her sunburnt skin.

She'd thought she was strong. She'd  _told_ herself she was strong. And lying in the bed now, with her muscles aching and her skin throbbing and some unknown thing gouging and bleeding her...she realized she had no idea what being  _strong_ would entail here. What this little island at the end of the world would ask of her.

She wasn't strong. She knew that now.

_He's a monster. His affection was a mirage…and you're an idiot._

She inhaled deeply, dragged whatever was left of him on the sheets into her tired lungs. The lowest notes of his cologne were left behind. Soon, those too would disappear into the wet sea air.

_He takes back everything he gives. Destroys everything he touches. It's his nature - you can't fault a snake for having fangs, can you?_

She turned her face to look out the great glass doors that opened up onto her deck. A warm southerly breeze billowed the pale gauzy curtains in and out of her villa; the mosquito net around her lonely bed swayed. On the pier, a torch burned dim and low, and in the resort rotunda, white table cloths fluttered like ghosts on the gusts of hot tropical wind. Nights on the island were dark, but the velvety-black sky was always scattered with brilliant glittering stars, and layers of feathered gray clouds that drifted across the heavy moon.

She sighed and pulled her ponytail loose, her cold, damp hair soothing her painful shoulders. She stared at the rubber band around her wrist and frowned, snapping it hard enough to make it sting.

 _Wake up_ , she told herself.  _Wake up and knock this shit off._

She would have to be  _strong_ tomorrow. That stupid, meaningless word again. Tomorrow, she would take the parts of herself that had softened, and hide them away while she licked her wounds. She would find the pieces of her shell that had shattered like crystal beneath his hands, and rebuild it, bit by bit.

She would calcify herself against these strange, desperate feelings. And she would tell herself, again and again, that she only felt them because they were  _here_ , at the end of it all, together.

There was endless research on the relationships forged by battle and difficult work. She'd been through it herself, with Steve, with Leon. Bonds like these felt deep, but were built on a foundation of mutual fear, of sheer survival. And here...once the camp was stable, once there was a real plan, once they lived year to year instead of day to day…she would look back at this time, and feel nothing.

She would be numb again.

She would be safe.

The sound of something wet hitting her deck made her jump. Before she realized what she was doing, she'd yanked her beretta from the sideboard. The bright red dot of her sight was aimed squarely on a dark figure, pulling itself up from the bay onto the swim-out of her private pool.

She held her breath, her chest on fire, her heart thundering against her ribs.

Slowly, she clicked the safety off and pulled back the hammer. She licked her lips.

The figure stood in the frame of her French doors, the curtains winding and unwinding around him in the starlight. She saw that it was a man.

A man had come out of the sea and into her room. Not a monster.

Fiery-bright eyes in a shadowed face betrayed his identity. Her heart, the wretched, pitiful traitor that it was, skipped and stammered.

The ocean dripped off him and sounded like rain on her deck…sounded like rain in her villa, as he stepped over the threshold. The moon, milky and full, shone in the trail of watery footprints he left behind. He came closer, without being invited, without waiting for her permission. She could  _see_  him then, she could see his face…

He looked so alive and afraid and  _awake._

She nudged the mosquito net open with the gun barrel and then laid the weapon down quietly on her side table. She sat up in her bed and stared at him, her brow furrowed.

"What…what are you doing?" She looked past him, out towards the pool, the ocean. "Did you...  _swim_  here?"

He didn't reply. He glanced back over his shoulder, at the water, at the pier, at the other villas, and then he looked at her again - the same startled expression, as if he couldn't believe he was there, as if he had no idea of how he came to be there at all.

 _Something was wrong._ He would never… he wouldn't show up here. He wouldn't come to her after days of silence, unless something had happened. Maybe someone was hurt - maybe it was Jill, or Sherry, or…

Chris. He had been so drunk.

_Oh God…not Chris. Please God, not him._

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, pushed the canopy open and stood up, shaking and naked, save for a pair of her brother's boxers. Wesker took a breath so deep she could hear it.

"What's wrong? What happened?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Why are you...what are you doing here?"

He blinked, his eyes more luminous than she had ever seen them - even in his rage. "Did you…" he started, and stopped almost immediately, struggling with the words, his voice barely a whisper. "Did you imagine someone else, when I was inside you?"

Her poor heart dropped, landing somewhere deep and heavy in her stomach. And then…the familiar, unwelcome sensation of tears, gathering just behind her wide eyes, threatening to fall. Her nose stung. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She panted.

_Don't cry. Why are you crying? Don't you dare…don't you dare show him...don't let him crack you!_

But it was too late.

She felt a tear trail down her hot cheek. She was pathetic. She was  _pathetic_  and she hadn't thought of Leon when Wesker had been inside her. She hadn't thought of anyone but  _him._

Her answer slipped out so softly, so suddenly, that she thought she may have imagined it. "No."

He was on her in two strides, in the span of time it took for a single sob to escape her throat. His hands found her face, held her still as his mouth claimed hers. He was kissing her. He was kissing her willingly,  _hungrily_ , his lips parting hers, his fingers guiding her up towards his mouth. He was leading her. He bent over her in the dark, her back bowing with him, and her body melting into his. He was cool and wet on her burning, tender skin. She cried into him - shocked, and ashamed, and completely hopeless.

Her fingers brushed his wrist, and closed around his forearm, holding his hand in place against her cheek. He kissed her  _hard_ \- achingly hard, and deep, his tongue on her lips, his tongue against hers. He kissed her like he was starving. And so was she. Her hand drifted to the back of his neck, pulling him down, pulling him closer. He tasted like the ocean - briny, dark, mysterious - and she drank him in, drowned in him, swept out by the roaring current of their touch.

He broke away with a shuddering breath, and his lips trailed down her jaw, down her throat to the soft curve of her bare shoulder, licking and sucking and nipping so gently that she could only shiver, and gasp.

He was going to devour her alive. And she was going to let him.

She tangled her fingers in his thick, wet hair and pulled his head back so that she could look at him.

He gazed down at her, panting, shoulders heaving. His hand cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing the swell of her bottom lip. He seemed almost… ethereal as they stood there, both breathless, both shocked.

"Do you need me, Claire?" he whispered, so close she could feel his words in her mouth.

She could only nod - mutely, absently, while his nose brushed against hers, and his breath mingled with hers, and he lowered his lips back to hers, his fingers twining in her hair.

_We need each other, Wesker._

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of our very patient readers! This has slowed down a bit as we work on another project, but it's always on our minds, so expect an update in the not-too-distant future. We appreciate everyone who takes the time to read and review!!


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